


Starfish

by dehautdesert



Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Angst, Bad Science, Basically I'm Awful, Case Fic, Did I Mention This Might Get Fucked Up?, Disturbing Dream Sequences, Disturbing Themes, Long-Distance Relationship, M/M, Mediocre History, Murder Mystery, Non-DOFP Compliant, Plot, Poor Charles, Tragedy, Violence, Warning For Everything Ever, Wordcount: It's Going To Be A Long One, horrible things happen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-12-25
Updated: 2015-01-10
Packaged: 2018-03-03 09:32:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 31,323
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2846252
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dehautdesert/pseuds/dehautdesert
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>September, 1964. After a routine visit to a mutant Cerebro found in the Mississippi State Penitentiary, a chance wrong turn and a spur-of-the-moment decision embroils Charles and Alex in the investigation into the murder of a local Klansman. At first wishing merely to help a civil rights' activist he knows via telepathy is innocent of the crime, Charles begins to discover that the truth behind this killing may be far more strange and dreadful than anyone knows, and he may be the only one who can help those involved.</p>
<p>But at the same time, fallout from what he suffered in Cuba festers in his mind and in his abilities. Erik has made contact with the X-Men again and Charles doesn't know why, only that he's planning something, and Charles can do nothing to stop him. In the sweltering heat of the Mississippi Delta and the even hotter atmosphere of hatred, pain and paranoia among the locals, Charles may be unable to save anyone, and could well find himself beginning to unravel...</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. I

**Author's Note:**

> [HUGE RAMBLING NOTE—SKIP IF YOU HAVE BETTER THINGS TO DO]
> 
> I had the idea for the ending of this fic (if I somehow get that far) in my head for quite some time (based on/ripped off from a single scene from NBC's 'Hannibal', which if you know the show and I do get that far, you'll probably recognise immediately), when a friend came over for a movie night. I picked 'First Class', she brought 'In the Heat of the Night'. Thus, this story was born, historical accuracy assured by me looking over some old notes I made when we looked at this period at Uni—surely the best way to ensure historical accuracy, you'll agree. 
> 
> A little forewarning so no one who's really itching for lots of hot Cherik action will be disappointed; this is more an action/adventure case!fic type thing—the way things are now I don't intend for Erik to appear much in the fic, though he has a very prominent presence in Charles' thoughts, which is why I've tagged for his relationship with Charles, but not for his own character. 
> 
> I'm also going to put a blanket content warning here at the start because as I write this I don't know exactly all the horrible stuff that will occur in the story. So it's kind of an 'enter at your own risk' type deal thing. I suppose the big one is the epic racism that you'd probably glean from the summary, and I suppose I'll say it here and now: certain characters will use the 'N' Word and it will be uncensored. Also, lots and lots of mindfuckery.
> 
> To start off, this chapter has (varying degrees of brief) mentions of murder, child murder, attempted suicide, rape, incest, child abuse and catcalling. And I'm only getting started...
> 
> And for all you mood-setters out there, the theme for the hypothetical opening credits of this fanfic is Ryan Bingham's 'Until I'm One With You'. 
> 
> Merry X-Mas (see what I did there? 'cause it's 'X-Men'... and I wrote 'X-Mas'? Geddit?)

 

 

There's a spider in one of the inmates' rooms.

Charles sees it through the eyes of George Kowalski as Alex wheels him up the corridor towards the private visitors' area.

It was the fear that alerted him, of course. George is just shy of 6'7" and more than 250 lbs of mostly muscle, but his mother used to lock him in the basement when she was drunk and somehow it's always seemed to him that the spiders that had crawled over his back and shoulders in that dark place had only grown with him as he'd got older.

George can't believe his eyes when his cellmate calmly walks into the corner, herds the arachnid onto his palm and throws her out through the bars on the window. Almost as if the man who stridently ignores him and has done so since they were put in a small room together had somehow read his mind.

It's just as strange for Elijah Ford. He'd noticed the strange look on George's face and cringed—because they say things about George, that he'd gone crazy and broken a man in half then bit his throat out, and Elijah's always been too scared to ask if that's true in case the same thing happens to him, and what if that's what finally happens today?—Christ, he hadn't meant to drink so much that night, the night that got him here, but hell, maybe it's what he'd deserve and—

_The spider. He's afraid of the spider, Elijah._

Like a little voice in his head. Then he'd just thrown the damn thing out of the room, shit. He sees George relax out of the corner of his eye, so that voice inside his head must have been right; instinct he supposes, but it's strange that such a huge guy would be scared of—

"You sure this is a good idea, Professor?"

Charles tears his attention away from George, Elijah, and the spider and returns it three floors down to the young man behind him. He smiles.

"Need I remind you I found one of my best students in similar circumstances?" he asks.

Alex rolls his eyes.

_Not the same_ , he's thinking.

"Yeah, but I was in for manslaughter. This guy murdered his family in cold blood."

That has put a dampener on the whole 'finding new friends' mission. Still, they don't know whether Lazlo Edington's mutation had anything to do with that—in a way the courts perhaps may not have understood. They don't know what the mutation is, for one thing. And there's probably a lot to be learned from every mutant they come across either way.

"All the same," he says, and leaves it there.

_Murdered his family._

He thinks those words and in the minds of the inmates of the Mississippi State Penitentiary he hears the echoes of thoughts that run along those lines.

_Murdered his family—chopped 'em to bits with an axe—_

_You know him? Guy shut his wife and three kids up and burned them alive so he could take up with his mistress full time, tried to make it look like an accident—_

_Killed his parents, though they probably deserved it. Like mine would have if I'd had the guts—_

_The brother was embezzling from the family business, but I don't think he meant to do it—_

_Shot the wife for cheating on him; kid was a witness so he shot her too—_

_Ain't like they was even my kids anyway..._

_To be honest, I'd have done the same—_

_If a woman can't even keep house, what the hell did she expect—_

_Makes for a good story, at any rate—_

_Did he really use an axe? I heard he shot the whole lot of them—_

_God, why haven't they killed me yet?_

_Fucking creepy. Strangled them one by one then went to work the next day like nothing happened. Four days before the kids' school sent someone to check on them._

There. That last one. It's accompanied by a visceral sense of fear the others aren't—something primal, as well as the regular horror you'd expect to feel from a statement like that. Is he thinking of the same man—

_...Lazlo Edington..._

Yes, that's the man they're there to see.

_...Can't stand the guy. Why can't they fucking gas him already? Creepy kid-killing bastard, everyone hates him..._

It's more than hate. It's more than fear. Charles doesn't quite know what to call it, but the first mind he'd latched onto that was thinking it wasn't alone in his feelings towards Mr. Edington.

_...Fuck him. God, why is he here? He's not normal!_

_...Put Henry Slater in the infirmary. How does a guy that size do something like that to someone like Slater?_

_...Edington, God don't even think about him. Don't even think about him..._

_...How many guys have tried to shank him now? And not a single one—he was a fucking banker! How does he scare them off!?_

_...That guy? He's literally not human. You mark my words. He's from the other place..._

Not a resounding appreciation for Mr. Edington. There seems to be some kind of understanding among the inmates that there's something out of the ordinary even for a man who'd killed his own wife and children about Edington, but Charles hasn't felt it quite like this before. It could just be the combination, he knows—mutation and murder, and yet...

The door opens in front of him and Alex. Suddenly the mental chatter of the inmates, a block of whom they have to pass in order to reach the room for private interview, shifts. Charles feels curiosity and apprehension, inmates preparing the best insults they can manage in order to suitably impress whoever may be wandering into their lair, and perhaps more importantly, their fellow inmates.

It's posturing. Frilled lizards puffing up their frill to look bigger; they won't actually bite in these circumstances.

Charles can't help but smile to himself; more genuinely, perhaps, than he's done all day. It's always nice to be surprised, even if in this case it's by the fact that he'd apparently not heard all the various colours of the English language until he'd heard the thoughts of some of these men. Some of them are quite inventive.

Behind him, Alex sighs, and Charles knows this is bringing back bad memories for the younger man, but he had insisted on being the one to accompany Charles here. He would have been too worried staying at the mansion otherwise, even with the knowledge that in the unlikely event there was a mass breakout of thieves, rapists and murderers at the prison, all Charles would have to do was make everyone think he was their best friend and they'd let him go unharmed.

_...Hell, they'd probably sit in their cells and wait for the authorities. No, they'd probably sit in friendship circles and wait for the authorities. Though he'd probably let the activists escape._

Oops. He'd gotten a little too far into Alex's head without meaning to there; he'd been trying to check for what he felt, not what he thought. Never mind. He lets Alex push him into the wide corridor of barred rooms.

The first inmate greets them warmly.

"Hey, dollface—from that gimp-chair you're at the perfect height to suck my cock!"

The remark sends a heated flash of anger through Alex and they push right past the man, but Charles doesn't mind it so much. He knows Jonah is scared. He only made a remark like that because he wants to impress the others, because things are going badly for him in here; he hadn't been prepared in any way for this kind of culture.

_Did I do it right? Will they get off my back about it now?_

Still, Alex is angry. Charles hopes to calm him down with a quip.

"Tempting," he murmurs, for Alex's ears only, "but I think his legs are a little too short for it to be perfect. I'd get an awful crick in my neck."

Alex snorts and the anger dissipates to the back of his mind.

They proceed, and Charles tries to ignore the rest of the remarks—thrown both at him and at Alex, though mostly at him because they can tell he's the authority figure; they have good instincts like that. It's hard, though. He can feel the fear behind the remarks. The desperation.

This is a brutal place, and men who deserve second chances are being bent and moulded into things they aren't. Men who could have been taught to be better are being pushed to become much worse. And he knows that in another part of the prison, out of the range of this baseline level telepathy, men are being falsely imprisoned for nothing more than fighting for their rights or those of their fellow men. He knows that in another part of the compound, the female prisoners are suffering the same.

It's disheartening. But he can't save everyone.

The guards are annoying him the most, actually. Well, the one on the left—Patrick Rider. He'd been expecting Charles to be shocked and horrified by the inmates' remarks— _take that uppity motherfucker down a peg or two, I can tell when someone is looking down on me, how dare he look down on me from a fucking wheelchair, crippled piece of_ —and now Charles is taking the comments in stride his thoughts are turning darker.

He'd like to see how composed the preening faggot would be if he had to live here permanently. He bets he'd cry like a little girl for weeks, would like to see him wheel after one of the bigger inmates, maybe George Kowalski, and rub his head against another man's hip like a dog, like to take him himself; to teach him respect like he did to the Falkland kid almost a fortnight ago now, crying, begging, spoiled little asshole—

Charles has to pull out of his mind. Christ, he's vile; and staying out of other people's business aside, isn't there something he could do about him? The other guard, Pablo; he's worried too, he doesn't know why Vincent Falkland slit his wrists three days back but it's bothered him the way Patrick has been so pleased about it when all the kid did was spray some graffiti on a church wall. If he asked some of the other inmates he'd find out what he needed to know, but Pablo is new, and scared of the inmates, and the other guards are trying to curb any compassion he might feel—

Focus, Charles. Focus.

_...So we have visitors? What a pleasant surprise..._

That's a new voice, and one that Charles can feel in a way only other mutants ever touch him.

Suddenly, that primal fear the other minds felt when they thought of Lazlo Edington is in his mind right now. Just a tiny fragment; a leaf on the surface of a river, but it's a leaf that feels much heavier than it should be.

The voice is a little curious, a little dismissive, not much else. There's no hope or anguish, at least not on the surface of this mind. It's unsettling, but Charles takes the chance nonetheless.

<<Lazlo?>>

Curiosity spikes, and he feels a hint of some kind of pleasure too, just before the mind cuts him off completely—and not on instinct; this is someone with experience with telepathy, or something like it. On one level it's promising, because if the man has a psionic ability he can't control there may indeed be an alternate explanation for the deaths of his family.

On the other hand, he does seem quite controlled. But it's been almost two years since then, maybe he's learned control quickly.

All the same, Charles is still not comfortable exposing others to psionics he hasn't had prior experience defending against. He reaches up and brushes the knuckles of his middle and index fingers against Alex's arm.

"Professor?"

"I think it may be an idea for me to speak to Mr. Edington alone, at least at first."

_...Is he joking? No way am I going to let him—come on, Summers, he can make his own decisions, what are you thinking?_

"Are you sure?"

Charles can't help but feel pleased at the way Alex had cut his own train of thought off. The mix of protectiveness and respect is just a little bit heart-warming.

"Most people like us I can control if they become violent and prevent them from using their ability," he explains. "But in this case I believe his powers may be somewhat like mine, and that makes me a little unsettled. I would hate for him to try to affect your mind."

"But you'd be okay if he tried to affect yours?" Alex presses.

"Oh, I'm quite confident of that."

Pablo and Patrick lead them to the end of the corridor and stop; Pablo stands to one side while his partner begins on the locks.

The man in the last cell on their right wolf-whistles as they wait for Patrick to open the gate.

"Hey, sweetheart, why don't you come on in and stay a while?—I'll treat you right, like a pretty-boy like you should be."

This man is neither afraid, angry, nor desperate. He's just having fun.

"Why, sir," Charles responds, and with clearly feigned shock. He almost calls him by his name, Clarence, but manages to stop himself. "And there after my accident I was so sure no one would look twice at me again. You have restored my self-confidence, you charming man."

Clarence is stunned for only a split-second before he bursts out laughing.

"Hey, I like you, pretty-boy. You're all right."

"Shut up, Parson," spits Patrick. "I'll have you in solitary faster than even you can spill yourself in a whore's snatch."

A brief image of a small, bare dark room; floor covered with human faeces— _shit, Parson, must have forgot to put the fucking bucket in. You know you're going to have to clean that up now_ —prompts a single thought in Clarence's head.

_Not worth it._

It's written all over his face as he sighs and turns back to his bunk. Charles exhales slowly.

It's one thing for the inmates to feel the need to form more brutal social structures in order to survive in a population of disproportionally violent individuals, and it's one thing for the guards to let that structure have formed and allow it to continue, but for them to participate in those brutalities themselves is something that should not be borne by the administration. If there was just something he could—

The door opens. Pablo takes them both into another white corridor, much smaller than the huge space in which the inmates are housed, bare and empty. Charles sees images of this corridor in the minds of those in the room they had just left, and it's generally not associated with pleasant experiences.

The infirmary is this way. And solitary confinement. And something else Charles doesn't want to pry into too far. Even Pablo is uncomfortable, and Alex seems to sense on instinct the unhappiness that this corridor brings, or perhaps he's just apprehensive.

Around the corner and past two green doors is a third, grey door. Charles knows before Pablo tells them, awkwardly, that the room is usually used for inmates to meet with their lawyers when they're working on appeals, but occasionally they do get other 'shrinks' in to study inmate behaviour.

There's a sudden unease as they approach the door. Pablo doesn't think it's anything other than a natural feeling; someone walking over his grave, as the saying goes, but Alex draws back and gives Charles a questioning look.

_Was that a projection, just now?_

Charles answers him.

<<You're quite right, Alex. I'm definitely going to talk to him alone now. Don't worry, I promise I'll let you know if I need you.>>

Once the door is opened Charles gets his first look at Lazlo Edington. He's a small man; scrawny, with an aquiline nose and stringy dark hair. Every part of him except for his eyes are unusually still; the eyes dart all over the place, and when they meet with Charles' for a fraction of a second he can't help but notice that they're the same colour Erik's were in dimmer lights.

Still are, he supposes. But then, he hasn't seen Erik in almost two years, and finds himself alternating day by day in telling himself he never will again, and in telling himself _'soon, soon'_.

Those eyes don't linger on his much longer than they do on anything else. Charles thinks Edington might be receiving psychic impressions from everyone else in the building, and is glancing in the directions these transmissions come from when they come. He reaches out gently with his mind.

_...Special, special, he's a special man—his father was not as kind as I was._

A sudden cold grips Charles' heart. In an instant he can see where this is going to go, maybe not as clear as if it were a film being played before his eyes, maybe more like a set of symbolic paintings, but paintings any artist could tell the meaning of, and he almost wants to stop and leave without saying a word, only that would be cowardly, and he's been trying to set a better example for the students.

Alex wheels him in.

"Thank you," he tells him. "Now, if you wouldn't mind waiting at the end of corridor until I call for you."

Pablo frowns. "I don't think he'll hear you from there."

"He will," Charles assures him. He gives the young guard's worries a gentle push away from the forefront of his mind.

He almost doesn't spot what's thrown at them in response—at Alex and Pablo only this time, not at him—from Edington's direction, but he recognises the paranoia just in time and plays the trick he learned from Emma Frost. He shields them.

Unused to psychic intrusion, at least as far as he's aware, Pablo tries to save face and doesn't react visibly, but Alex can tell what Charles has just done, and he likes the idea of leaving him alone with Edington even less now. Charles speaks into his head before he can object verbally.

<<It's all right, Alex. His projection range seems to be limited, and I doubt he has any experience attacking the shields of other telepaths.>>

As he watches Edington frown, realising his little prompt of negative feeling hasn't had its intended effect, he thinks 'telepath' is probably not the right word. No, Edington can't project or read thoughts, only feelings. Empathy. Something the majority of the human race already possesses, but here amplified to extraordinary degree.

And yet, and at the same time, there's something very wrong with this empathy. A comprehension, without an understanding. Charles struggles to repress a shiver as Alex steps back reluctantly out of the room.

"Why don't the two of you wait at the end of the corridor for me," he suggests, and adds a little psychic suggestion for Pablo as well—it's what the young guard wants to do anyway, there was just that streak of duty and worry in his head that felt like he really should be monitoring the poor guy in the wheelchair as he interviews the psychotic murderer.

But he accepts the suggestion so readily that Charles isn't sure the psychic part was really even necessary. Alex lingers, throwing a glare at Edington that promises violence should he decide to try anything—and you don't need special powers to figure that one out. But Charles knows he doesn't need any further encouragement. _The Professor can handle this,_ he's telling himself. _Even if you were there, all you'd do is make him have to shield you from this freak._

He steps back and allows Pablo to shut the door, leaving Charles alone in the room with Lazlo Edington, whose curiosity is steadily rising, now laced with a degree of irritation. He's still not as curious as Charles would have expected, though.

"Mr. Edington," he greets him, not bothering to make his voice sound friendly when he knows Edington could feel otherwise. Instead, the words sound blank to his own ears—he can't tell exactly what Edington thinks because Edington doesn't seem to have an opinion yet. "My name is Charles Xavier, I run an institute in New York dedicated to the development of gifted individuals, and the study of the mutations that produce these gifts. I have been lead to understand that you may have some idea of what I'm talking about."

Edington slowly tilts his head.

"There are others," he says, voice almost a whisper. It's not a question.

"There are," Charles confirms. A brief flash of thought in Edington's head makes him add, "But you already knew that, didn't you?"

A grin.

The first image that Edington gives to him is of the girls. Lottie had been a month shy of her ninth birthday and Angelina five-and-a-half. She'd wanted a purple cake for her next birthday. Purple, to match the way her hair had started growing in purple. It had been her favourite colour, so she'd been pleased about that despite how strange her mother had found it.

In the image the girls are playing on the front lawn. It's a lovely suburban street and the sun is shining through the window that Edington had been looking out of when this memory was formed, casting a square of light on the kitchen floor. Angelina is chasing Lottie with a skipping rope she's tried to tie into a lasso, screaming with laughter. Lottie is laughing too, until she suddenly isn't.

_She knows._

Margaret is flipping through a magazine in the living room. She knows to look up when she feels her husband's eyes on her and she smiles because she's always happy to see him. He makes sure of it.

It's then the damned dog pads its way into the kitchen. The damned dog that ruined everything.

Charles pulls away a little with the impression that, like his, Edington's powers don't work so well on animals. He doesn't yet know how the dog ruined everything, but if Lottie had begun to realise that her father was... different, and the dog—Titan—had been causing problems, then even that small strain on a mind like Edington's, a mind that he can already tell is unpredictable... well. He already knows the consequences were dire.

"Angelina's hair was easy enough to dye back to brown," Edington tells him with a shrug. "Lottie was something else. I used to think maybe she wasn't even really my daughter, you know? Me and her mama and sister all having such dark hair until Angie's began to change. Lottie was a blonde."

"Blonde hair is a recessive gene," Charles tells him. "As long as one ancestor of both you and Margaret had blonde hair there was always a chance your daughter would inherit. And she did inherit your gift, or something like it."

He sees Lottie standing in the hallway, Titan by her side. He's growling softly, even as she pats his head, and if she'd been a dog she might have been growling too.

This is wrong. His family was supposed to be _perfect._

There's another image of a different, older girl with a haunted look in eyes resting on dark circles. Her hair is darker than Lottie's will be, twenty-five years later, and it hangs limply from her scalp, past her bruised neck. Melissa. _Sister_.

_Raven_ , Charles' mind echoes back once he hears the word. His fingers twitch on the arms of his chair. _Focus_ , he tells himself. He hasn't had much experience with other psionics, and even with one much weaker than he is he fears it may be all too easy to get tangled up when part of the mind he's looking into is trying to look back at him.

"I didn't think it was the kind of thing that could be inherited," Edington says in the present. "It always felt more like something I'd been chosen for. To make the world a better place, by making people happy."

Whether they liked it or not.

_No, Daddy. No._

Charles takes a deep breath. This conversation is making him extremely uneasy, and he can feel subconsciously what's going to happen, he just doesn't really want his conscious mind to catch up with it yet. He's seen so many dark and twisted minds over the years, frankly it exhausts him to come into contact with such an unfamiliar type of wreck.

"How old were you when you first noticed it?"

"I was thirteen when I _noticed_ it," says Edington. "But it ain't always clear if you're feeling your own heartache or someone else's, not when times are tough all over anyway."

_"You hurt so much, Lissy. Even with the blankets and the pillow and my hands over my ears I can hear it. I wish you'd just be quiet."_

A small house had been all their father could afford during the depression. It had been ludicrous to imagine Lazlo wouldn't have known what he was doing to her.

_"I don't know what you mean, Laz."_

_"Wouldn't it be better, if you could just be quiet?"_

"At first," Edington continues, as Charles wishes he could shut his eyes to the knowledge that Edington had grown up hearing his father rape his sister, feeling her pain, her shame, her despair, "it was just feeling what others felt. I couldn't make them feel what I wanted them to instead until I left school."

Last week Henry Slater had tried to bulk up his prison street cred by shanking Edington in the cafeteria.

" _Fucking kiddie-killer,_ " he'd hissed, and he'd drawn the blade and then—

FearfearfearfearfearfearfearfearfearfearfearfearFEAR!

—and it had been Slater who'd ended up shanked.

"I thought I was supposed to make people feel happy, you know? That's what a man should do. Make his family happy..." he exhales. Charles can feel annoyance building. "But then Lottie..."

_No, Daddy. No._

Lottie hadn't liked tomatoes. Margaret had wanted her to eat them anyway. Lazlo—Edington, had felt her temperament start to go sour, and had intervened with happyhappycalmsubmithappy.

And Lottie had blocked those feelings and refused to eat her tomatoes.

" _I just don't understand it,_ " Margaret had said, as their eldest had stomped up the stairs to her room, the dog following her. " _We've never had to punish her before. I mean, I know that's not normal for a kid, but it's normal for her, right?_ "

Edington hadn't been able to think of a reply. Dark thoughts had been brewing in his head. His job was to make his family happy, after all. How could he do that if Lottie was starting to reject him, reject his benevolence? Didn't she know how lucky she was to have him as a father? A father who could make her and her mother and sister happy, no matter what?

How _dare_ she?

"Can you receive and project every type of emotion?" Charles asks. He's struggling to keep his voice clinical.

"That I know of," Edington tells him proudly, a little chuckle following. "Some are easier than others. Happiness is the easiest; I have the most practice with it, but I haven't used it in here much. The people in here don't deserve it."

_Maybe no one deserves it._

"No one deserves endless misery, Lazlo," Charles says. It's instinctual when he hears a sentiment such as 'no one deserves happiness'. For a fleeting second he thinks of Erik.

"Maybe not," says Edington. "No, I think it's best in the end to just make them quiet. That's what I think now, anyway. You must have thought it before too, Doctor. You can read more than I can, I can tell. All that noise; you must have thought it would be better if it all just went away?"

There's a pause. Charles continues a moment later, as if he hadn't heard Edington's reply.

"To your knowledge, have your powers ever produced a physiological reaction in another person?"

Edington blinks. "Have I had an effect on more than just their minds, you mean? I can't say as I ever noticed such a thing... maybe I made their hearts race a little. Is that something you can do?"

Charles doesn't answer. He can't remember the next question he was going to ask, he'd been focusing too hard on the last one while Edington had spoke of making everything quiet. He thinks of electrodes placed at his temples, and the leather bit going into his mouth. It leaves an opening for Edington.

"I'll take that as a yes. I had to strangle my girls to make them quiet, but I reckon you could have done it just by thinking it."

He'd strangled the dog first. It just hadn't done, to have a dog that wouldn't obey its master. It had all been that damned dog's fault.

Lottie and Angie had cried and cried, as you'd expect children would do when the family pet died. He'd let them cry for a whole hour before he'd decided that that was enough, and it was time for everyone to be happy again.

_No, Daddy. No._

And Lottie had pushed his gift away. That in itself had been annoying, if by that time half-expected. But then he'd seen her turn her eyes on Angie and felt the indignation from her—Titan had been a good dog to Angie, and Lottie felt he'd deserved more than an hour of tears and then nothing from the girl.

She'd pushed his gift out of her sister too.

Once Angie had started crying again, everything had been ruined. He couldn't even let Margaret live, because how could she be happy once the girls were gone? He'd done her last though. Angie first, because she was his good child and he'd failed her; just in time for Lottie to realise something was wrong as she'd felt her sister die. She'd run right to the bedroom, standing in the open doorway.

Their eyes had locked, and she'd tried to run, but she'd only been an eight year old girl, and him a grown man. He'd caught her before she could even cry for help.

" _Is this what makes you happy?_ " he'd hissed into her ear as he'd squeezed the life out of her. " _Are you happy now? You selfish, ungrateful little bitch—you made me do this!_ "

" _I'm sorry, Lissy, but you know you made me do this. Now be quiet or you'll wake your brother up._ "

" _You made me do this, Charles. You forced my hand, and you'd better not let anyone know about the doctor we're taking you to, or your mother will probably never be able to show her face in polite society again_."

" _The humans have forced my hand, Charles. They made this happen, not us_."

It's funny, in a way Charles could never really laugh at. The only person he knew who could ever really _make_ people do anything was himself. And he'd never make them do a thing like that.

He hopes Lazlo—Edington, keep it 'Edington'—didn't receive any of those memories that just popped into his head. He can't quite tell if they'd leaked out or if he'd just thought them privately. It might be best to end this interview as soon as possible.

Still, he tries for a final question. It might help any empaths he meets in the future, after all.

"Was it only ever your family you used your power on, and only ever your daughter who resisted it?"

"It was mostly the family, yeah—at least before I came here. I won't lie, I used to like to make women feel comfortable around me, about going further than they might have ordinarily done—I used to try and, well, I don't know how to put this politely— _get them wet_ —but I guess I couldn't push a thing like that. As for the other thing, there were those who resisted the feelings I gave them, the scumbags here who can sometimes fight through the fear, but only my girl ever fought _me_."

He leans closer, grinning.

"Tell me, doc—with your gift, can you feel other people's legs, like they were your own?"

Charles' hands clamp down on the sides of the chair. Edington's powers have made him very intuitive, even without the ability to read specific thoughts. It had been how he'd known Lottie's reasoning for removing his influence from Angelina. He'd wanted to get back at Charles since he'd come in, for removing his projection from Alex and Pablo.

Fingering the wheelchair as a point of insecurity is something a child could have done, but linking it to his powers like that is frighteningly clever.

"I could," Charles tells him, slowly. He's fighting hard to keep looking at Edington's eyes, trying to look strong.

Edington is still all over the place, but his gaze has been returning to Charles' with greater and greater frequency as the conversation progresses.

"But you won't? Is that a bad thing, somehow? I'm sure you could do it without them noticing."

"Even so, without their permission, it would be wrong. They're not my legs, after all."

_Any more than the ones attached to my body are any longer_ , he tries not to think.

"You couldn't get someone's permission? Like the fellow who wheeled you in?"

"Perhaps. But it would also be unethical to ask that of a person I already had such a degree of power over."

The whirling eyes widen, almost comically.

"I get the feeling you think a lot about ethics, Doc. What did you say your name was again?"

Charles smiles, though there's a knot forming in his stomach that's starting to make him feel nauseous. He needs to terminate this interview now; Edington may not think he has enough power to evoke a physiological response, but being even half in his mind is making Charles physically ill.

"I'm afraid it doesn't really matter. You won't remember anything of this conversation after I leave."

Again, the eyes widen, and fix on his for a whole three seconds.

"You can do that?"

"I can indeed."

"And you will do that?" He's not angry—more impressed than anything else; a little disappointed that he won't remember meeting such an interesting person, but it doesn't really matter to him in the end.

Nothing really does.

He continues, "Rather than, say, I don't know—give me advice on the first step to redemption and how to use my gift as God intended?"

There's a lot Charles could say to that. It's strange, though. He almost can't help the words that come out of his mouth.

"A relationship with someone very dear to me once taught me that even the people you care for the most, even those who would shine brighter than any other if they would only give themselves that chance, sometimes can't be helped." He pauses. "Unfortunately, Mr. Edington, you are much, much further beyond my reach than he was."

<<Alex.>>

_Professor?_

<<Please instruct the guard to return to the cell. I should very much like for us to make our exit.>>

Edington tilts his head, smiling with resignation.

"Yeah, I guess I am. Still, as one gifted individual to another, maybe _you'll_ take _my_ advice."

Charles knows what his advice is going to be. He almost wishes he was the kind of man who would make Edington not say it.

"Trying to make them happy isn't worth it, Doc. Just make them quiet. It's a lot easier in the long run."

Somehow Charles' eyelids feel unbearably heavy, and he closes them.

<<I'm sorry you feel that way,>> he projects into Edington's mind. <<Goodbye, Mr. Edington.>>

 

*~*~*~*

 


	2. II

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, this... sure is chapter two.
> 
> Thank you to all who left kudos or comments. In this chapter, Charles discusses the last chapter with Alex, has the first of the disturbing dream sequences I tagged for, is pulled out of his car by a local asshole and maybe bites off more than he can chew in response. Also, the reason for the title of this fic is revealed.
> 
> This chapter contains epic racism, a bit of Charles whump, and references to murder and ECT. 
> 
> Wow, that just doesn't seem as exciting as the last chapter. Although it is, in fact, very exciting and I hope you read it.

 

*~*~*

 

 

Before they leave the prison, Charles prompts one of the supervisors to do a surprise routine check of the guards' lockers—the kind they're supposed to do every so often at this institution but almost never do.

They find several different types of contraband in Patrick's locker, and at least now he'll be fired.

He has a baby on the way. Charles can hear him yelling it at the warden. But if worse comes to worst his wife can move back in with her parents and probably be better off for it. It's not worth having a guard raping the inmates with impunity. Though he knows Patrick isn't the only one.

All Charles can do, all he can let himself do after that, is leave one good dream in the mind of every inmate he can pick out.

It still discomforts him when he hears the voices of the men singing just out of sight on the chain gang. He can hear their exhaustion; never mind feel it. The air is hot and thick with cotton. Once Alex has loaded the wheelchair into the back of the car and he's strapped himself in, Charles breathes a heavy sigh of relief and lets his head tip back against the seat. Being in this place... he doesn't want to think about it. The conversation with Edington has only been top of the list in the horrors that can be found here.

Those poor girls, and their mother. Their deaths had been not long after the events in Cuba, when Charles had taken a break from looking for other mutants to recover and adapt to his injury, and to plan for the needs and structure of the school. Before now he hadn't actually considered taking underage mutants away from their parents if their parents wanted to keep them, but if he had been able to get to those girls in time...

She'd only wanted Titan to have the respect he deserved. Had that really been such an imperfection? Had Edington been so ruined by the feelings of his father and sister when that atrocity had been committed that he couldn't even allow the inconvenience of a child not wanting to eat their vegetables in his life?

"You okay, Professor?" Alex asks him. He knows anything in the realm of 'yes' will be a lie. You wouldn't have to be psychic to know that.

"I'm sure I will be," Charles tells him.

"That bad?"

He starts the car. Charles glances back at the building and then turns his head to face forward again because the nausea hasn't gone away and not keeping his head straight makes it worse.

As they approach the gates, Alex gathers up the courage to probe further.

"I take it killing his family wasn't a side-effect of his mutant powers then?"

To make things expedient, Charles lets the guards think they've already seen their pass so they can leave without stopping. Alex doesn't ask about that; he's used to things like that by now.

"No," Charles tells him. "Although his experience of them was not irrelevant to the man he became, the murders of his wife and daughters were no accident on his part."

 _Well, shit_ , Alex thinks.

"Indeed."

"Was he..." _Like you? No, don't say that._ "... a telepath?"

"Not exactly. 'Empath', is the term I'd use, though saying he had 'empathy' in this case is misleading. In short, he could only read and project feelings and emotions, not thoughts."

Alex frowns. "You'd think someone like that—I mean, looking at you as an example and all—you'd think someone like that would be the last person who'd want to kill someone."

Charles can tell Alex is worried that he doesn't want to discuss this with him—that bringing it up is somehow painful, and in a way it is and Charles would rather be asleep, but it also feels relieving to talk about it and get it off his chest, as it were.

"As I said," he murmurs. "Mr. Edington is an empath without empathy. He feels the feelings of others, but they don't mean anything to him beyond how he can use them for the purpose of manipulation."

They're driving south to the airport, and the road is mostly empty for the first few miles. The sun is so bright it's almost as if it distorts the way colours should be, washes them out and soaks their hue into the shadows to make them darker. This is Charles' first time in the state of Mississippi, and he's not enjoying it. There were some beautiful locations on their drive up, but the general feeling from the populated areas, and especially that of the prison... that and the heat is reminding him of Cuba. It had been too bright there too.

"I have to say, Professor. I kind of really don't get that."

"He wanted the perfect family," Charles tells him. "A family who was always happy, to make up for the miserable one he'd had as a child. And he made sure they were always happy, no matter what, by projecting happy feelings into their heads."

Alex absorbs that. "Then why did he kill them?"

"The older daughter began displaying similar powers, or some other psychic ability that allowed her to block his influence. Apparently she didn't appreciate being made to feel emotions that weren't her own. I believe he was already planning to dispose of her when she figured out how to block his influence from her sister as well. That just pushed him over the edge."

He doesn't tell Alex about Titan. Alex is upset enough learning about the girls, learning about the dog will make it worse, and he doesn't need to know about that.

"He killed his own daughters for _that_?"

"He is an extremely disturbed man," Charles tells him, as if it's not obvious. Or perhaps it's important he says that instead of 'monster'. He makes sure to add, "One of the worst cases I've ever come across."

"Not _the_ worst?"

Charles meets his eyes in the rearview mirror.

<<He's not Sebastian Shaw.>>

Alex cringes. Normally one would try to push thoughts of someone like Shaw away when he happened to be brought up, and normally Alex's thoughts are not far from normal for a young man in his position, but after a few moments he can tell Shaw is still lingering, and then Alex says—

"The two worst cases you've come across, and both of them are mutants?"

Sadly, the thought had not escaped Charles either.

"Shaw was the worst," he says. "Edington on par with some of the others, but yes. Both mutants. I think once you have the kind of power we have, and once you decide you have the right to exercise that power however you see fit, your capacity for harm is much greater than that of a regular human. Once you indulge in those capacities, and normalise them, your mind becomes more twisted than most people ever could be."

There's a pause as Alex takes that in, frowning. At length he lets his face relax.

"The trick is to not use your power for evil then?"

Charles smiles.

"Quite. But to know what is evil and what isn't..." he trails off. "Many, for instance, would say without thinking that making sure your daughters were always happy was an act of altruism."

"You must have thought about things like that though," Alex says, hesitantly, fearing he's about to tread on dangerous ground. "Or you could just make every asshole we ever met into a decent human being."

_Make them quiet._

"Yes," says Charles. "I think some might call that playing God. But in theory even God allows free will, so what it would be in reality would be a sad and lonely man playing with a billion dolls. And once I was gone, well..."

Damn, that had just slipped out. He hopes Alex doesn't think Charles means he's lonely _now_ , only that he would be if everyone in the world was simply doing whatever he wanted them to, like a doll collection.

Although he is lonely now. But Alex shouldn't know that, it might upset him, or even create feelings of inadequacy, and that's the last thing Charles wants. All the same he forces himself not to scan Alex's mind to check and Alex replies to him thus.

"I guess when you think about it all these 'if this, then this' scenarios come up, but I think if I had your power, Professor, I would be so tempted to just make people not evil."

"Every man is tempted by something," Charles tells him.

Another car passes them on the road. The driver—

_...If I'm late again 'cause of them waste-of-time marches then I swear the next time I see them I'll run them right over! It ain't like they're going to change anything anyway!_

Charles shuts his eyes, and tries to shut out the minds around him as well.

It's much too hot. Ever since Cuba, even the parts of his body he can still feel haven't felt as strong. He can only shield his mind.

It's much too hot.

_The nurse has to wipe the sweat from his brow twice before Herr Doctor is ready to apply the electrodes._

_He is so scared._

_"Shh. I know this must seem scary to you, Erik, but things will be better when it's over. Trust me."_

_There's a scraping noise when the nurse pulls the curtains closed, blocking the orange light of the setting sun from entering the room, except right at the edges where it can't help but creep in, putting little spots of light on the floor._

_Like four large squares, cast from a window he could once see two young girls playing from._

_The girls cry noisily in the corner, but sound much further away than they could possibly be. He can't turn his head with the strap holding it in place, but he can see their shadows out of the corner of his eye. Herr Doctor shot their dog because he couldn't move that coin. Because he couldn't save them._

_"So ungrateful," mutters the doctor. "What I give to you is a gift. Do you understand that?"_

_Selfish, ungrateful little bitches!_

_Do you want to feel the full force of the world's misery?_

_Do you enjoy being in pain?_

_"If it is pain you want, that I can give to you in spades. Do you understand me, Erik?"_

_"I understand," he thinks, but there's something wrong with this picture._

_There shouldn't be a window in this room. Even one hidden behind a curtain. This room is much too clean, the light not nearly harsh enough, the soldiers... where are the soldiers? Where is—_

_"Where is the boy's mother, nurse?" asks Herr Doctor. "She should be here to comfort him during the treatment."_

_Alles ist gut, Erik. Alles ist gut._

_< <Stop crying for your Mama, Lissy, she ain't coming. What would you go calling for a dumb whore who left you and your brother here to rot for anyhow?>>_

_"I got in touch with... I think it was the maid, Herr Doctor. The mother is very busy at the moment but she'll send the driver round to collect him when we're done."_

_Herr Doctor sighs._

_"Frankly, with that attitude, it's little wonder he thinks he hears her spouting contempt for him in his head. Ah well. We'll start with the baseline voltage, Nurse."_

_No, this is wrong._

_He can't speak through the leather in his mouth, but he tries to communicate it to the doctor anyway, through his thoughts. He met a boy once who could do that. He told him he'd never have to steal food again._

_"This is wrong," he thinks, and Herr Doctor hears him. "Erik's mother would never leave him here like this on purpose. You killed her. And you would never have given him electroconvulsive therapy, there was no reason to think it would helps him gain control of his powers, while as a method of control the only thing it might have done was erase memory. And what if it erased the memory of his mother's death?"_

_Herr Doctor smiles._

_"Since when were you Erik?"_

_Oh._

_"One hundred volts, nurse. This is my gift to you."_

_Alles ist gut._

_BANG BANG BANG!_

Charles opens his eyes, jolted awake by a combination of shocks, not least of which is the banging on the window that somehow translated to gunshots in his dream. The familiar mind of Alex is tight with irritation that has suddenly and rapidly burst into rage, and there's a hint of worry in it with that same protective tone he's been projecting all day.

"Hey! Hey, I told you to stop that!"

There's another mind there too—three, four, several—dozens, most in heightened states of emotion, mostly negative—anger, fear, frustration, righteous—

"Can you please step out of the car, sir?"

The voice is annoyed and callous. The speaker is a Sherriff's deputy who's had just about enough of liberal hoity-toity academics coming down from the north to his neck of the woods where they ain't got no business being and no idea of how things work, just to cause trouble for folks who are just trying to live their lives in peace and take care of the _problem_ the only way they can.

_...'Freedom Riders', my ass. Bastards don't know the meaning of the word..._

Louis Montaigne. A tall, round-faced man with curly honey-brown hair beneath his hat. Charles gets his name from his thoughts just before he sees it sewn on the man's shirt.

"Can. You. Step... Out of the car?!"

"For god's sake—"

BANG!

Montaigne slams his truncheon against the front door.

"You stay right where you are, Yankee-Doodle; hands where I can see them."

Sleep-confused and still tired, Charles can't use his ability with the precision needed to make this go away without consequences, so he takes a deep breath.

"Is there a problem, Officer?" he asks, mildly.

His accent provokes a negative response in the officer, emotionally. It speaks of 'outsider' and 'privileged' to him, shortening his temper. He throws the door open roughly. The temperature is not that different outside the car to inside, which makes for an unpleasant experience.

"I'm going to give you one more chance on account of you just waking up, now step out of the car before I pull you out by your fancy tie, _sir_."

"He. Can't," Alex snaps through gritted teeth. "If you'd pull your head out of your god damned ass so you could listen to what I'm telling you—"

<<No, Alex.>>

"That's it, I gave you enough warnings."

Charles still can't take over this man's mind. There are too many witnesses he's only partially aware of, he can't be certain of what they'll do or how many memories he may need to alter if Mr. Montaigne does something too out of character.

So he can't think of anything else to do when Montaigne leans into the car and clicks his seatbelt open.

"Hey!" yells Alex.

He's reaching for his own seatbelt at the same time as Charles feels the unfamiliar hands, one around his tie—Montaigne is a man of his word, if nothing else—wrapping the silk around his wrist in a single motion and grabbing the two sides of his unbuttoned shirt collar together, the other around the fabric of his jacket right by the right-side pocket, fingers rubbing painfully at the skin beneath; two where he can feel it normally, two where the sensation is muted and strange in the area where the nerves begin to become defunct.

When he's pulled bodily out of the car, his legs hit the ground just hard enough for him to register an impact. The rest of him soon follows, painfully.

"Professor!"

"Come, on, get up!"

He can hear the sound the officer's boot makes when it kicks his left leg back, almost under the car, and he's sure that if that leg still felt anything it would have been very painful. Right now all the pain is coming from the arm he landed on, and he really hopes he hasn't sprained his wrist as he hoists himself up onto his elbows.

At least he's half on the grass. The sidewalk is baking.

"Hey! You leave him the fuck—"

"Alex!"

Alex cries out as the truncheon gets him in the upper arm and he's knocked back against the car.

"I _told_ you to stay in the car, boy—are you and your friend here deaf or something!?"

"Are you? I'm telling you, he can't—"

The truncheon hits the side of the car again. Charles casts his mind about everyone else in the vicinity as he pulls himself onto the grass and tries to keep calm. Although he's only half aware of what's happening, that awareness is enough for him to know that this situation—though unpleasant—shouldn't be too much of a problem.

And yet, everyone around him is strangely, unnaturally scared.

"That's enough! And you—I told you to get up!"

Montaigne grabs him by the shoulder of his jacket and tries to hoist him to his feet. He's strong, so he gets Charles almost all the way up before he inevitably goes back down; this time backwards, thanks to Montaigne pushing him back. As he falls, he sees another, junior deputy standing just behind the car.

Karl McIntosh. Twenty-One. Tall, skinny, raven-haired. Scared.

— _never been a killing like that before, maybe we should call in for help from the feds, I don't think this is helping_ —

Charles falls back against the grass. His head hits the ground just hard enough to hurt. He has to shut his eyes when he finds himself outside the shade of the building their car had been stopped in front of; the glare of the sun is merciless.

<<Open the trunk, Karl.>>

He tries to make it seem like the thought occurred naturally. Even if it doesn't, a single command like that will probably be disregarded as a trick of the imagination. Though it may confuse Karl just a little that the voice had an English accent.

"You been drinking, feller?" Montaigne asks—sceptically, since he hasn't smelled any alcohol, but then who knew what kind of drugs those academic types were taking before they came down here?

Thankfully, the trunk is opened.

"All right, that is fucking it—"

<<No, Alex—it's all right, stay where you are.>>

_But—_

"Uh, sir?"

Montaigne sighs, stopping himself just as he was about to reach down and try to pull Charles upright again.

"What is it, Karl?"

"Uh, there's some kind of wheelchair folded up in the trunk. I think the feller may be crippled or something."

The jarring halt to Montaigne's previous line of thought comes as a welcome reprieve, and Alex manages not to use his powers to singe Montaigne's legs off and see how he likes it—not that he would have actually done it, but he was thinking it—waiting to see what the deputy's move will be now.

 _God damn it_ , Montaigne is thinking, _what the hell would they send a cripple down here for, they know we ain't treating them with kid gloves!_

There's a flash of memory and Montaigne's father is pushing his own wheelchair along the crooked floorboards of the old house, a look of murder on his face, and Daddy always said he didn't let the Japs take both his legs so the government could throw his country away to the Jews and the negroes and the god damned socialist atheist—

It was a world Ira Montaigne couldn't stand to live in any longer, and that was why he'd eaten his own gun after that ICC ruling desegregated his favourite diner—

Charles extricates himself from Montaigne's mind quickly, feeling about as ashamed for prying that far—he really hadn't meant to, but those were the thoughts that had come to the surface as soon as he'd seen the chair—as Montaigne had the moment he'd realised why it was the weird feller wasn't getting up even after getting kicked and pulled around like that. Montaigne grits his teeth.

"Henry," he calls.

Henry is not a deputy, not normally, but he was deputised earlier this morning to help with crowd control once it became clear it was going to be a problem.

It's only then Charles truly notices the crowd.

They flood back into his perception as though he'd subconsciously put up a mental dam in order to concentrate solely on the officers, and suddenly what Montaigne and McIntosh have been thinking about these past few minutes becomes a lot easier to understand.

The building they're in front of is the Yazoo County Police Station, and between them and the doors a scared and angry crowd of between fifty and a hundred people are watching—some throwing out comments, most just waiting to see how this particular stop-and-search is going to go. There are a number of other cars stopped around them, their drivers impatient, scared, and like the crowd in front of the station; mostly black.

_...if this is how they treat their own people..._

_...Oh, nice going, Montaigne; you managed to beat up a cripple—truly a hero of the white race, though knowing how things are I guess someone might actually pay attention now..._

_...this is getting way out of hand..._

_...was he on the list? God, we weren't expecting anyone like that; he's just someone who happened to be passing through, Jesus Christ..._

_...I shouldn't have come here. I know what I told Diana but god damn it, I shouldn't have come here, they're going to recognise me next time they come to the store..._

_...come on, don't give them the satisfaction, people—keep it together..._

_...I have to tell them. I have to. It won't get him completely off the hook and Dad will probably have a fit, but at this rate they're going to lynch him like all the others, and I can't let that happen..._

_...She's going to tell them. Shit, Lilah—weren't you listening to a word I said? You try to give them an alibi like that and they'll kill him anyway, the only way we can save him is to find out who really killed that asshole..._

_...more than anything if they don't do their jobs properly then the real killer will probably kill again..._

_...Not my Daddy. God, please, don't let them hurt my Daddy..._

He pulls back a little and takes note of the first, hastily made sign his eyes fall on:

'INNOCENT UNTIL PROVEN GUILTY'

He doesn't need to look much further than the surface thoughts to know what's happening here. A murder blamed automatically on a local civil rights activist, the latest in a long, long list of injustices surrounding this particular struggle. A kind of hopelessness in half the crowd that know from experience that their friend will likely be unjustly killed no matter what—unless someone does something. And the urge to do something is strong, but...

But this isn't just this one injustice here; it's everywhere. And he's already so tired...

Less so when Henry picks him up bodily with as much effort as most people would use to pick up a casserole dish. Fortunately for Charles, Henry's mind is comfortingly simple, and free from the violence that's seething beneath the surface of most of the other people in the vicinity.

_...hope I'm not hurting the poor feller..._

Montaigne stalks up to him and pats him down, then adjusts Charles' collar and tie so they aren't so crooked without really thinking about what he's doing. Used to drive his Daddy crazy— _you watch where you put your hands, boy; I ain't an invalid and I can still smack the bejeezus out of you if you treat me like one_.

"See if he has any ID, Henry."

Henry is lost for a moment, before Charles prompts—

"Upper left pocket."

"Oh, thanks!"

He has to shift all of Charles' weight onto one arm while he fishes in the pocket, but it doesn't seem to bother him any more than it did with two arms. He finds the card easily enough.

"Professor Charles Francis... " he trails off, squinting. _Now how do I say that? 'Zavier' or 'Ex-avier'_?

"Xavier."

"I can read!" he snaps. _'Stupid boy, ain't never going to amount to nothing if you can't even read a god damn kiddie's book, this one said it was for six-year-olds, and you're already eight'—'I'm trying, Mama, I swear I'm trying!'_ —and he looks contrite almost immediately. "Sorry."

Charles smiles. "Trust me, you're not the first to have problems with it."

" 'Francis Xavier'. That's a papist name, ain't it?" Montaigne points out, glaring with more distrust than before.

Having not been to Mass since his mother's funeral, Charles blinks three times before he realises what Montaigne is upset about now. And really, for God's sake...

"Don't worry, officer; I've lapsed," he assures him.

 _Least he ain't another Jew,_ thinks Montaigne. Henry continues.

"... Oxford University, Department of Criminal Psychology."

Henry says 'psychology' with a hard 'p', but Charles knows better than to try and correct him now. He hopes no one tries to verify the credentials without his supervision; or look at them when he's not there to make them think they say anything other than 'Department of Genetics' though in his experience people rarely bother.

Montaigne just blinks at him in surprise, then screws his face up.

"So, what—your job is to tell people why the bad guys are bad? Hell, any idiot can tell you that. It's in the blood."

"So some might say," Charles replies, keeping his tone the same as it would be if a student had asked him a question during a lecture. "Others insist it to be a matter of upbringing. Personally, I prefer to see these things as individual choices, but one cannot deny that there are elements that influence those choices." He pauses, glancing at the car. "If you'd like to discuss it further, I'm sure my assistant would be happy to fetch my chair."

Montaigne snorts. " 'cause I really have time to shoot the shit with some princess in an ivory tower, is that it? You blind as well as crippled, son?"

He jerks his head towards the crowd. They're not quiet, but few of them are yelling at the officers anymore; most are discussing what's happening amongst themselves, and worriedly. Charles is somewhat bemused to be called 'son' by a man only... hmm... nine—no, eight-and-a-half years older than him, but that's not all that's occupying his mind.

The sheriff himself is inside the station, on the phone with the governor, as Charles can tell from the thoughts of the third uniformed man, Montaigne's 'partner' as it were—Nero Kincaid, formerly a detective in New Orleans. He's younger than Montaigne but with far more experience in homicide; and homicide is what has drawn the crowd to the station and the man being held there.

Kincaid's thoughts are much quieter than those of almost everyone around him; since he moved back to these parts to be closer to Aunt Leticia he's gotten too used to trying _not_ to think, he actively stops his mind from wandering down certain paths and it throws up a kind of rudimentary shield from telepathy. But of course, he's not doing it to block out telepaths.

... _don't think about it, don't you even, you know it's just going to end up the same way—until whatever it is kills again—criminal psychiatrist, maybe he could lend some credence to the theory—don't even think it, Montaigne will never listen—God's sake though, it's obvious Chance didn't do it_...

Curious, Charles switches from reading Kincaid's current thoughts to the memories he's going over in order to get a little context, and sees a series of pictures. A white man about Alex's age whooping from the back of a car as he pulls a pointed white hood over his head and laughs. The two men in the front seat honk the horn incessantly and holler. A black man on the other side of the street scowls.

Wilfred Chance.

That same white man who'd been in the back of the car, dead; torn apart, old Sawbones Seraston said it wasn't an animal that did it, but fuck; Will Chance couldn't have done _that_...

Charles turns his attention back to Montaigne.

"I don't know," he says casually. "It seems you've had a crime. Perhaps you'd like my opinion?"

"Professor?" Alex says, shocked.

Charles is a little shocked himself. He'd just offered without thinking about the consequences, which is hardly a good example to set for his student. Must have been the heat.

And Montaigne looks even more suspicious than before now.

"Your boy there said you was interviewing up at Parchman. I figured those Freedom Riders had put you up to it. They tell you to come down here too?"

"I wasn't interviewing Freedom Riders at Parchman, Mr. Montaigne, the project I'm currently working on concerns family annihilators; that is, people who murder their entire family in cold blood. We spoke with one Lazlo Edington regarding his strangling his wife and daughters."

Montaigne actually steps back to consider this. His estimation of Charles goes up a notch, and he nods for Henry to rest him on the back seat of the car, facing out. Not the most comfortable position with nothing to support his back, but a step up from the arms of a total stranger; gentle as Henry had been endeavouring to be.

Of course, Montaigne hasn't magically decided to accept Charles' presence. This might be a good thing, because whatever has happened really has nothing to do with Charles, and he can't fix every problem or save every person in distress, especially when he's meant to be keeping a low profile, and yet...

Charles sends a little psychic prompt to Nero Kincaid, and Kincaid walks forward, as he'd wanted to do anyway. Usually Charles likes to let people make these kinds of decisions on their own, without even the slightest prompting; but sometimes a little push means they'll be quicker to take the plunge next time.

Or, someone might just throw them off a satellite dish.

—and yes it's arrogant to assume he should just do these kinds of things; be the angel on other peoples' shoulders, but at the same time there has to be _some_ kind of balance between doing nothing and controlling people's lives like he's everyone's overbearing mother.

"Lou, I know I've been at this job less than a year, but you've known me my whole life," Kincaid mumbles. He can't make eye contact, but Montaigne listens to him because he has known him all his life after all. "There's something not right about this one. And with all that media attention and people saying we ain't nothing but a bunch of dumb hicks whose first answer to every problem's a lynching... Sheriff did want another pair of eyes. Maybe this feller's one of them gift horses."

Montaigne hates mostly everything from outside the Delta, especially god damned integrationist shit-stirrers, like he just knows this crippled bastard and his personal ass-kisser are, fancy psychiatrist or no.

But he's not stupid. There's a flash in his mind too, the memory of that man—Walter Lee Lovell, twenty-two—lying on a sheet beside the bayou they'd fished him out of. Torn up like...

Like nothing he's ever seen before. That also piques Charles' curiosity somewhat.

He—Montaigne, mulls it over for a few seconds. Thinks of his father, slamming his hand down on the table; _'I ain't useless, boy, you tell them to keep their goddamn charity to themselves if they know what's good for them, and mind you do the same!'_

Thinks maybe he should do something to make up for throwing a feller that can't walk out of a car.

For a few seconds more he narrows his eyes at Charles and then he turns back to the waiting crowd, whose chatter dies down as they sense they're about to be addressed.

"Hear that, brothers and sisters?" he mocks. "Y'all got yourselves an _expert_ to take a look at your boy's case. All the way from Oxford—and I'm guessing he don't mean the one in Lafayette. So untwist your britches, ladies and gents. Ain't no need for all this fuss."

With another jerk of Montaigne's head, McIntosh is pulling Charles' wheelchair out of the truck of their car, and Alex makes his move to unfold it properly. Charles can tell Alex is no longer entirely surprised by this turn of events—there's even a swirl of excited anticipation beneath his surface as he throws a questioning look at Charles.

Charles smiles. "What a nice man that deputy was, don't you think?"

Alex and Kincaid both snort.

From the crowd, Charles hears a litany he'd been hearing before change direction, aim itself towards him specifically. _Please help my Daddy, please help my Daddy, please help my Daddy._

Violet Ann Chance. Fourteen years old.

He supposes he'll have to do his best; now he's gotten himself in for the proverbial penny.

 

*~*~*~*

 

A man walking along the seashore sees a colony of beached starfish beginning to dry out in the sun; thousands upon thousands of them, and amidst these dying bodies, another man throwing them back one by one, as far out into the water as he can.

"What are you doing?" asks the first man. "The sun will dehydrate them to death within the hour and there must be half a million of them; you won't throw enough back to save even a one in a hundred, so what does it matter?!"

The second man takes a moment to look the first man in the eye, then bends down, picks up another starfish, and throws it back into the ocean. In a clear and calm voice, he replies:

"It matters to _that_ one."

 

*~*~*~*

 


	3. III

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, it's a brand new year (well, the year is a day old, but I forgot to post this yesterday because I suck), and what better way to celebrate than with murder! Murder, most foul... well, actually the victim was a member of the KKK, so I suppose it's not the most foul of murders, but it was still pretty grisly, and that brings me to the chapter specific warnings. (you may have noticed I've updated the tags to reflect where I now think the story is going)
> 
> For this chapter: more racism, uncensored use of the N word, references to real murders still within living memory, gruesome description of a mutilated corpse, and other delights. In this chapter, Charles gets a clearer picture of the situation in the town and surrounding area and goes to examine the corpse. Also, there is much failing in his efforts to not think about Erik. Enjoy, and thank you to those who left kudos...

 

*~*~*

 

When Charles asks Alex to stay behind once Montaigne is done talking to the Sherriff so that he can see what he can find out from the crowd, he's not surprised that Alex is reluctant that they should split up; but he doesn't voice this reluctance and it's Kincaid who protests.

"Ain't you going to want to talk to our main suspect?"

Charles is already well aware that Mr. Chance is innocent.

<<The man in question has a solid alibi,>> he tells Alex privately. <<However, that alibi can only be provided by one Miss Lilah Rickaster; the young blonde woman at the front of the cordon, in the blue dress. Unfortunately, in this part of the country such an alibi would be considered a crime equally worthy of death.>>

Alex rolls his eyes. An image of Darwin flirting with Raven flashes briefly through his mind, and Charles has to swallow when the Raven of Alex's memories meets his eyes. Out loud he says—

"I'd prefer to take a look at the body first. Right now he's the only one I know who was definitely connected to the crime."

Kincaid raises his eyebrows. "Fair enough." _Don't ask him, don't think about it, why would you even bother—what's the point?_ He sighs. "You sure you know what you're getting into?"

"Not at all, deputy. But as you may have guessed, we're not exactly strangers to difficult situations."

"No, but you are strangers to the Delta. And that's like to make this situation a damn sight more difficult than you may think."

Perhaps. Charles can still read newspapers, and he knows very well what happened a few months ago and a few counties over. _Mississippi Burning_. He has a distinct advantage over those poor young men in his mutation though, or he wouldn't have dared to risk Alex's life like this.

Or at least, that's what he hopes he was thinking when he set himself and Alex on this path.

A short, telepathic glance tells him Kincaid is thinking about the very same events, but not only as basis for comparison. And that's interesting.

"I am aware of what happened to Mr. Chaney and his companions back in June," he says. "But I am not here as an integrationist."

That elicits a grimace from Kincaid.

... _No real evidence Lovell was up there except what Chance said; there must have been dozens of guys in on that thing anyway—what the hell did they think was going to happen?_...

"Yeah..." he says out loud, and slowly. "But you may end up defending one, and a lot of folks here have their minds made up." He pauses. _May as well tell him now_. "Suppose you'll hear it sooner or later. There's been talk that the victim in this case—Walter Lee Lovell—that he was up in Neshoba about the time that whole thing went down."

"Was he a member of the Klan?"

"He was a White Knight," Kincaid confirms. "Everyone knows he and Chance hated each other's guts. Chance was one of the few who actually managed to get registered, and Lovell would vandalise his property—rocks through windows, painting rude words on the door, making comments about his daughter—kid's stuff, really. He wasn't the only one."

_...It is just kid's stuff. You can't think about it any other way; there's just no point..._

"And the locals immediately assumed it was him?"

 _They want it to be_ , Kincaid thinks. _They want to have something to hold up and say 'see, we're suffering too!' and maybe have someone up in Washington actually give a damn... idiots, the bunch of them; not that Chance was any smarter, saying what he did_.

"Lovell might have said something along the lines of 'you better believe you'll be next', the other day, and Chance, well... he lost his temper, brought up the other feller."

"Other fellow?"

 _Malcolm X,_ thinks Kincaid; a name that sours his thoughts too much for him to bring himself to say it.

"I see," Charles tells him. "But there's no actual evidence linking him to the crime apart from him having a motive?"

"Not that I know of. Then again, I don't see that there's any other motive for killing Walt, he got along fine with everyone else. If you ask me, this killing wasn't about personal matters."

"You think it was random?"

There's a long pause. Feelings of fear, discomfort and foreboding swirl in Kincaid's mind without coalescing into coherent thought.

"I think anyone who did what was done to Walt can't have been operating on a full tank, if you know what I mean."

Another picture flashes behind Kincaid's eyes; a camera lighting up that grisly spectacle for what it was for just a second, wide and lifeless orbs staring up at the sky, mouth slightly open—with those buck teeth you couldn't not recognise him, even in that state—long red slashes glistening with bone and organ fragments, pale wet skin flecked with dirt from the swamp.

Dogs barking. The sheriff yelling. The fiancée screaming. So much noise.

Charles pulls himself out of Kincaid's head and hopes he doesn't have to return soon, even if he'll be his most likely ally among the local authorities. The constant flow of denials and cynical resignation in that man's head creates a sensation oddly like panic in Charles'. It sounds bizarre, but he actively prefers Montaigne's more straightforward psyche, even if the man is an unabashed bigot.

Speaking of whom, the door to the station opens and Montaigne strolls out, wondering whether or not to screw around with the cripple's head before he lets him know the Sheriff has agreed to let him consult on the case. Charles had known he'd do so before Montaigne did, of course.

"Well? Are you letting him go?" demands one of the crowd members.

Elton Danvers, twenty-two, Harvard law student trying extra hard to advocate for Wilfred Chance so he can convince himself he's not jealous that Chance has gained Lilah's affections where he himself has failed.

Currently being ignored by Montaigne.

Danvers' aggression increases. "Is Yazoo County exempt from the laws of the Constitution that the rest of us live by!? The false imprisonment of a citizen—"

"Ah, shut up," Montaigne tells him, waving his hand and jogging the rest of the way down the steps. He doesn't show it, but he is nervous when the crowd is on both sides of him.

"What's the verdict?" asks Kincaid.

Montaigne glares, robbed of his chance to make Charles sweat for it. But Charles is sweating plenty already in this heat, so he obliges with only the slightest hesitation.

"Old Raines says he can ask any questions he wants. Suspect we'd better get Henry to lift him into the building." He eyes the stairs he'd just come down with doubt.

"Actually I'd prefer to see the body first," says Charles. "Mr. Kincaid here was just explaining the facts of the situation, and it seems to me that but for a single exchange there's no more reason to suspect Mr. Chance for the murder than there is to suspect any other activist. So I'd like to take a look at the hard evidence."

With a slow whistle Montaigne lets his hands fall against his sides. "Suit yourself," he tells him.

He's not an idiot. On one level he too knows that Chance is innocent. But another part of him believes the lie because that's just the way things are supposed to work.

"If my assistant could be permitted to remain behind, however?"

"Oh, by all means—if you don't mind one of my boys driving you over. I'll ring ahead for our local sawbones, Doctor Seraston, so he knows to expect you."

"That would be most kind of you."

Montaigne snaps his fingers and points at McIntosh. "Karl, you want to drive our guest up to the Calders' place?"

"Yes, sir."

Charles touches Alex's forearm briefly.

"You know what to do?"

Alex nods. His discomfort is written as much in his face as in his thoughts, however.

_...Should you really let him go off on his own like that—you know it's dangerous for outsiders here and this isn't a controlled environment like the prison—what are you doing, Alex, it's not like he's a child; even if they did try something he could take care of it easier than you could, probably._

<<I'll be fine, Alex. We can contact the others later to let them know we may be late.>>

"I can phone the airport while I'm here," Alex says. _Blue-boy is going to be so fucking jealous he missed out on this!_

"That's a good idea. Now, where do we depart from?"

McIntosh is about to move to grasp the handles on Charles' wheelchair, so Charles implants the better thought of him leading the way, and Montaigne doesn't take note of it because Hell if his Daddy had ever wanted to be pushed when he could pull himself along just fine. Once that had got to be too much for him, well...

He steps aside to allow Charles to pass, tipping his hat mockingly as he does. Charles gives him a cheerful nod in return, and follows McIntosh around the other side of the building. As he does he casts his mind outwards to the crowd one last time to try and absorb what he can of them, what they know, and how they'll react to his presence and to his personality.

Violet's mind—the daughter of the accused—is the one that calls to him the loudest, dreading what she fears is the inevitable loss of her father and, given that her mother has already passed, her orphaning. Her grandparents would take her in, of course, but how long would it be—she thinks—before someone came for them, or for her? Dr. Reese and his daughter Danica, Violet's friend since childhood, had up and disappeared without a trace a few months ago, and even though her daddy told her they probably just migrated north like so many others had done, she'd seen the look on his face as he'd said it and she'd known he'd been lying, so it wasn't like they'd spare her for being a child.

Charles wants to comfort her, but he can't. Not right now.

Aside from Lilah and Elton, four more minds attract his attention, their names echoing in the background thoughts of many of the others, and for various reasons.

Miriam Jane Hatley, 'Miri-Jay' as most of the crowd thinks of her, is something of a leader in the movement as it exists in this county, and the only other African–American in town who was able to register to vote. They look to her while Chance is locked up, but both they and she know that a rift is beginning to develop between them. Miri believes wholeheartedly in the words of Dr. King, even though her spirit is starting to falter. Chance...

Chance has recently begun taking more note of another man in the crowd, Jonas Locke. Locke was chased out of Tennessee for his activism but brazenly went even further south instead of heading for the Mason-Dixon line. Although he dislikes Malcolm X on the basis of his religion, he agrees with his views on race relations almost to a T, and where he doesn't agree he's usually pushing further than X would.

He's not as bitter as Erik. Nor as self-loathing. But the anger is very similar.

He's brought a knife to the protest, and Charles can only hope that no one but the two of them will ever know that.

In contrast, Mickey Dupris is only there because he was beginning to worry about what his friends would say if he wasn't. His parents, though black, are firmly against integration and the financial insecurity that would come with their store no longer being pretty much the only option in town for servicing the black community. It's definitely not worth risking a lynch mob coming after them, they've said, not by any means.

But that's not why Charles finds himself focussing on him. No, that would be because Dupris actually may have some information important to the case—

_...said one of the wounds looked just like that cow they found up at the back of the Carton property back in July, but even if I did bring it up would any one of them actually listen?..._

Charles passes that information to Alex before McIntosh leads him past the front of the building. He lets go of the minds of the crowd soon after, including that of the final mind that had stuck out.

Said mind is that of Greta Hartmann. She's the third and final member of the team of academics who came to this particular part of the south, and the oldest; studying for a doctorate in archaeology. Although she's a few years younger than Erik, Charles sees the same memory of smoke rising from those tall chimneys in her mind, feels the same ghost of pain from the numbers along her forearm.

She was there too, though being younger than Erik was the memories are a little more distant. Charles finds it difficult to resist temptation to look for Erik in her memories, in case they saw each other there, but resist he does—that's not his business and frankly the whole idea of Erik is best left alone during his waking hours. He already can't escape him in his sleep.

In contrast to Locke and to Erik, Greta is cautiously optimistic about this endeavour, which is a pleasant change from the usual.

"You going to need help getting into the car?" asks McIntosh, distracting Charles for a second.

Normally, Alex or Hank stands by just in case, and sometimes assistance is desired. But pride demands Charles answers: "I shouldn't think so, officer. If you could just put the chair in the back once I'm in I would be much obliged."

"Will do." He pauses, awkwardly. "Um... sorry about that trouble there. Montaigne didn't know you, uh... you know. Couldn't walk and all."

"Oh, not at all," says Charles, smiling ruefully. "Though if I may make a suggestion—there are those with conditions far more serious than mine who may suffer far worse under such treatment, and preventing the exacerbation of those conditions would perhaps be easier if Mr. Montaigne were to exercise a little more care in his duties."

McIntosh tilts his head and abruptly spits at the side of the building. Lovely.

"Yeah, maybe," he says. "But the thing about that is you never know when someone may be dangerous. Once had an eleven-year-old boy try to stick me with a pencil; crazy brat."

_This is a better turn of events than I could have hoped for—the bitch's brat is crazy; the money's as good as mine!_

That jolt of a dead man's thoughts was from a memory that hasn't troubled Charles in a long time, and as ever it's an unwelcome one. He grits his teeth and runs his fingers through his hair. After everything that's happened today it would be unbecoming for a casual remark of McIntosh's to be the thing to make him snap, but he doesn't reply to the other man's words and lets him think he's proved a point in order to keep his temper in check.

It's hard not to sleep on the journey over to the funeral parlour, despite the chance for recriminations.

 _What the hell are you thinking?_ is the precursor Charles' common sense (or cowardice, perhaps—unfortunate how those two can run along a spectrum and not on opposing lines) begins to berate him with.

_You don't have time for this._

_This isn't your fight._

_You can't just jump in without any forethought for the consequences._

_There's too much work to do back in Westchester to do and you can't shirk your responsibility to the younger ones for some ego-stroking adventure—you know they look to you before the others for guidance._

_You could just end up making things worse._

_This is going to be very. Very. Loud._

Honestly, he has to admit that that last one is the most likely to turn him northwards again, however selfish it sounds. And yet...

And yet they pull up in front of the parlour and Charles has done nothing to bring this crazy venture to a close. In for a penny, after all. He doesn't really believe in fate, but he can still use it as an excuse.

A starfish that just happened to catch his eye.

A man so good at lying he can even fool himself.

The building is old, bordered by two weeping willows, and seems small for a place to keep a dead body; as though the departed deserve a grander temporary resting place—or perhaps just that the un-departed would prefer a little more space between them. There are only five minds inside. Charles glances over them briefly.

Jeremiah and Loretta Lovell, the victim's parents. Ellen Ann George, his fiancée. Their grief and anger burns hard enough that he shies away from their heads and gets their names from the mind of Jacob Calders, proprietor of the establishment.

Then there's Oscar Seraston, surgeon and makeshift medical examiner. His is a quiet mind, but not in the same way as Kincaid's, which tries to hide from itself, just naturally a little more subdued than the average person. He is nonetheless very worried that an innocent man will die because of this, and he's not even sure it was a man that did the killing.

Another potential ally. Thank god for that because it's far more than can be said for the family. Having not looked too deeply into their minds, Charles learns that when Jeremiah throws the door to the funeral home open just as McIntosh is getting the chair out of the car.

"Karl!" he yells, voice thick with emotion. "What's happened? They didn't let that nigger out of the station, did they?!"

Charles doesn't flinch at the word. He's been hearing it in people's heads all day.

McIntosh becomes far more reticent— _Hell and damnation, Jerry's here; he's going to throw a fit when he finds out_ —and he stills, as his eyes narrow like they're pained. Then he takes a deep breath.

"No, Jerry. They ain't done that."

"Well, what's happening, Karl—who's this?"

Hesitating, McIntosh looks towards Charles and back at Lovell, rubbing the back of his head. He shrugs.

"He's uh... a professor. Come to take a look at the evidence." He mutters to Charles under his breath. "You need help getting out of the car, sir?"

"I'll be fine," Charles replies, just as Lovell begins shouting.

"Evidence!? What the hell do you need evidence for—that nigger slaughtered my boy! Now you go back to Raines, God damn it, and you tell him I want the son of a bitch hung!"

McIntosh holds his hands up defensively. "He knows that, Jerry, he knows that. He just wants the expert to come down take a look so folks can't say anything was done improper, that's all."

Lovell's closed fist strikes the wooden door frame he's standing in, and desperation bleeds into the anger in his eyes.

"For _God's_ sake, Karl..."

"Jerry?"

Doctor Oscar James Seraston had wondered when he'd heard the car pull up whether or not he should leave his work and go and see who it was. Charles had thought of giving him a gentle nudge to the door, but once he'd heard Lovell Sr. yelling he'd needed no encouragement, and Charles had felt like cursing himself a little for letting subtle psychic manipulations become as much of a first resort for him as they had.

At any rate, Seraston appears with his hands raised in preparation to put them down on Lovell's shoulders, but Lovell throws him off before he makes contact and storms back into the building. Seraston sighs.

The silence that follows is far beyond awkward; it's painful, and once Charles has positioned himself back into his chair he breaks it with a short cough.

"Doctor Seraston?"

Seraston looks his way; a middle-aged man verging on 'old', with thick, curly white hair and round thick-framed glasses. He's confused, but ignores the confusion easily, welcoming the distraction of a stranger in their midst.

"How do you do," Charles continues. "Charles Xavier; Oxford University, Department of Psychology. I was passing through and we happened to be stopped by Deputy Montaigne. I thought it might be an idea to offer my assistance in regards to the incident that occurred last night—my work deals primarily with violent criminals."

The relief that sweeps through Seraston is obvious even to McIntosh. He strides forward to shake Charles' hand firmly.

"Thank the Lord," he breathes. "I knew as soon as I looked at that poor boy that we ain't equipped out here for a proper investigation, but damned if that idiot Sherriff would ever have brought outsiders into Yazoo willingly. Not in our current climate."

"I'd noticed," mutters Charles. "And I'm not sure what help I alone can provide, but whatever small assistance that may be I'd like to give it all the same."

"Right now I'd welcome anything. Let me help you up those steps."

There's some small difficulty getting him into the building, and once he's there the violent emotions of the family become almost too much to ignore, even though he catches no more than a glimpse of them as he's wheeled past the waiting room. The father in particular is extremely volatile, but the shock the other two are stuck in creates a sensation like a jolt of static electricity in Charles' head. And more family members will be there soon, all angry and unlikely to listen to reason. Like Kincaid had said, even in the confines of his own head, they _wanted_ Wilfred Chance to be responsible. They'd be almost overjoyed if it was him.

Only it isn't.

And once Charles gets his first look at the body; his first real look and not a recollection distorted by darkness and morbid imagination in someone else's head, he can see why so many to whom upholding the racial dichotomy of the area is ridiculously paramount are actually nervous about allowing Chance to take the fall. McIntosh waits outside the room with deliberate stiltedness.

At least the room is air-conditioned.

From his chair, Charles sees the corpse in profile—still clothed, what's left of the clothing, for modesty. This isn't a proper autopsy, after all. The eyes have been closed, but there's no hiding the long slash marks that Charles knows looking through Seraston's eyes go all the way from the hip that Charles can see to the opposite shoulder. Three of them, the central one the largest and in some places cut right through the bone.

There are another three along the upper left arm that Charles can see with his own eyes as that's the side that's facing him, and through Seraston's he sees another group of three torn across Lovell Jr.'s right thigh—and that's the thing about these marks in all cases; the way they're grouped together. It raises an instinct in Charles that seems patently absurd, and yet...

"Doctor Seraston, might I inquire as to what weapon you believe to have made these marks?"

The look he receives is more telling than the answer.

"I noticed it too," Seraston tells him. "And if I didn't know any better I'd have said some kind of animal did it. I don't know any animal that'd leave marks like these, though. The closest I could come to would be a bear—nothing else is big enough, only a bear would have left marks in groups of four and besides which we don't get them out here. Add this to the way the body was disposed of I can only assume someone wanted to make it look like an animal had done it, but I don't know what weapon they could have used. These weren't near clean enough to have been made with a blade."

Charles frowns. "And how was the body discovered?"

"Floating in the bayou," Seraston replies, shaking his head. "Under some weeds as though to hide him. Only a gator would have left a meal in there and this certainly ain't a gator's work. Jerry found him—Jeremiah Lovell, that is—the boy's father. He's the man you saw yelling out there earlier, the two of them was hunting and got separated."

In order to form a clearer picture of events, Charles will need to know exactly what Lovell's movements were up to the time of his death and how long it was until he was found—he knows enough about police work to know that, but he doesn't relish asking the victim's father for the information and debates on whether or not the locals would figure something was up if he just acquired that knowledge through telepathy.

Before he gets to that though, there's something else Seraston wants to tell him.

"There is something else," he says. "I don't know if you could see it from that chair though."

A quick glance around the small, grey room gives Charles a quick solution.

"I could probably make it up onto that counter with a little help."

Seraston isn't sixty yet, plus he's in good health, especially considering their location. He sweeps his hand out and thinks _by all means_ while Charles wheels up to the counter and puts his arms on it.

"I've gotten somewhat used to lifting myself out of the bath," he remarks casually, a segway into answering Seraston's unasked question without literally replying to something the man hadn't even coalesced into a thought. He doesn't mind people knowing the extent of his injuries, though he doubts he'd ever come clean about the origin to anyone. Not in any detail, at least. "If you could just grab my legs."

"How long since you lost them?" Seraston asks. Charles can hear the doctor in his voice.

"Two years once we reach October's end," he says.

"Accident?"

_You did this._

_No, Erik. You did._

"... Yes," Charles says, eventually. The long hesitation is not unnoticed, but Seraston is much too polite to mention it. Charles puts it out of his head as quickly as he can.

He reaches over and puts his palms flat on the counter next to the sink, raising his body up almost to the height he needs and trying not to look like the effort pains him too much, though the ache in his muscles is still unfamiliar enough to put a seed of despair in the back of his mind. Had Alex or Hank been there he might have let him simply lift him into his arms and quipped about it, Sean too if he were strong enough but those are the people he's comfortable with. Seraston is quick and clinical in grabbing the dead weight of his legs, however, and in only a few seconds they have him seated and balanced on the surface.

The doctor wastes no time in pushing the gurney Walter Lovell lies on as close to Charles as he can get without letting the edge touch his shins, and adjusts the light so the corpse is completely visible.

Seeing the wounds with his own eyes rather than through the eyes and memories of others is not as meaningful as one might have expected; even as much as Charles might once have expected, and that is not a comfort. Either his telepathy is growing so strong that it takes no effort to absorb the experiences of another as his own, or as little effort as the exertion of which is beyond his ability to notice, or he's simply not noticing a lack of control.

It's not something he has the space to think about right now. Seraston walks around the end of the gurney and stops at the centre across from Charles. He then pulls back the filthy shirt from the corpse's right hip.

Charles leans in closer. There's a mark there, three or so inches to the right of the navel. It looks like a somewhat elliptical puncture wound, but the pale discolouration and almost... _wrinkled_ looking texture of the skin four inches around it in every direction is very odd. Very odd indeed.

"What _is_ that, Doctor?" he asks, too taken aback to even contemplate looking for the answer in Seraston's mind. He does remember what Mickey Dupris had been thinking about though—the cow that had supposedly had a similar mark, and this was the mark he'd meant, Charles can tell.

"I wish I knew, Mr. Xavier. Something was driven into him and then... well, I don't know if you can reach over, but this whole area is hard; not like rigor, but like a good deal of the moisture was just... sucked out."

"Moisture?" Charles repeats.

Seraston nods. "Elsewhere on the body there was still some blood left in the veins when I first took a look, but here there was just nothing." He furrows his brow and looks out towards the wall that adjoins the room the Lovell family are in, as if to look through it and make sure they weren't listening in. "The family doesn't want a proper autopsy—the idea of any more interference with the body than what's already been done... I don't think they can handle it. But I did get something of a look at the area considering the slashes above it are so deep. There is something very odd about that boy's pancreas."

A picture from Seraston's mind of the glimpse he'd had of Lovell's pancreas is compared with another memory of what the organ should look like, and it has Charles confused, and now not a little bit worried.

He'd assumed, of course, that it would be no great difficulty to provide the Sherriff's department with the real culprit as soon as he'd sifted through enough minds to find them for himself. But right now he can't even say definitively what the cause of death was, and he doesn't know where to start in finding the one responsible.

 _Arrogance,_ he told himself, and if his inner voice had been a real one it would have spat the word at him. _You always think everything is going to be so easy._

"This isn't reminiscent of anything you've seen before, then?" he asks, already knowing the answer as much as he knows he needs a distraction from useless self-recrimination.

"No, sir," Seraston tells him. "There was some kind of clear substance in and around the wound that the river didn't wash away, and I collected that for the lab in Jackson but I didn't know if Raines was going to want it sent out, and even if he does it won't be back for two, three weeks."

By which time Mr. Chance's fate will most assuredly have already been decided. Raines may not have wanted to contact the FBI, or even the State Police, but he has contacted friends from neighbouring counties and all over Mississippi as he fished for help in 'keeping the peace'. And he's not the only one.

Charles might have said it was lucky he'd arrived on scene as quickly as he did, but right about now there's a little part of him that looks like the smoking remains of a ship out on a sea of thought that wonders if it will make any difference at all.

Well, since it's probable Lovell won't magically come back to life in the next five minutes to tell them exactly who put an end to his days of dressing up like a cartoon ghost, Charles is just going to have to actually use his brain.

 _It's a muscle like any other_ , his own voice mocks him. _God, why am I such an insufferable git_?

The culprit is not an animal. But they may be attempting to lay the blame on one; that suggests a certain intelligence but not one that can take into account the intelligences of others. Measures were taken to hide the body, but not well—a slide over the thoughts of Lovell Sr. tells him this.

Can he say whether or not the killing was premeditated? Although alone in the woods is a good place to carry out such an attack, how would a killer have known Lovell would be there? Unless they had been stalking him for some time before hand.

On the other hand, and this is the impression Charles gets from the hasty disposal and confused forensic countermeasures, if Lovell had merely stumbled upon his killer by chance, then what had they been doing out in the woods in the middle of the night?

A fellow hunter?

No, there's a sharp little needle of guilt in Lovell Sr.'s anger that Charles follows to discover that the land they had been on was protected, so the Lovells had been poachers, not hunters.

... _if the God damn bank repossesses the house what the hell else are we going to do..._

He sighs. _Stop prying, Charles._

Had Lovell been killed by another poacher then? Over the same prize? No other corpses had been found in the area according to the father's memories, human or animal, and yet there had been that dead and half-eaten cow found on the Carton property with the same rigid puncture wound on the non-consumed part.

What kind of poacher would consume their kill then and there when the farmer could have come by at any time and caught them? And presumably raw at that?

Charles leans his head back against the cabinet. He's going to have to talk to Dupris again—what again? he's never talked to him before, it just feels like he has—but assuming the cow and Lovell were killed by the same being—by the same person...

Why does he keep thinking 'being'? It's obviously not really an animal. It's obvious.

But if they're the same killer, if they killed that cow, then they ate part of it raw and out in the open, like an animal. Kincaid had said he thought the killer might have been mentally disturbed, and with his fair share of firsthand experience with mental disturbances Charles prefers not to make a judgement without an actual doctor's diagnosis. However, in this case...

"In your opinion, Doctor," Charles says, still looking up at the ceiling as though the answers will be written there if he looks hard enough. "Could the weapon used to kill Mr. Lovell be some kind of construction of the killer's own making?"

"In my opinion I fail to see how it could be anything else," Seraston replies. "I examined the wounds carefully though, and I don't see any fragments of wood, metal, paint or anything else that lends itself to being used as a weapon, or tool of any kind."

_No metal. Wasn't Erik then._

... What a stupid thing to think. As if Erik spends his days lurking in a Mississippi swamp like the creature from the black lagoon the same way he does in Charles' mind. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

_Stop thinking about Erik._

It might be an idea to get a witness to the cow incident in to view to body for comparison. Then, if it can be proved Chance has an alibi for the cow's death that doesn't involve the dreaded 'miscegenation', the white locals may be persuaded to see him as off the hook.

Only, that begs the question of who would take his place.

"I don't suppose," Charles begins, glancing at the wall that separates them from the Lovells again, "You've heard of any alternate suspects for this killing?"

Seraston shakes his head. "I wish there was. I'll admit I don't interact with, uh, the coloured community all that much—most of the gossip I hear comes from my cleaning lady, Lily-Rose—but they did send for me as soon as they found the body, and I heard their chatter. Lou Montaigne wanted to try and implicate that Locke feller what came down from Tennessee, along with Chance, but he had an alibi."

There's a slight hesitation, and then Seraston remembers something else. He chuckles to himself and instantly dismisses it, but even as he voices it aloud for Charles' amusement, there's a little gap that panic has worked into his rationality through which the idea slips into the back of his head that's thinking; _Couldn't be. Could it_?

"Henry Franklin did have another suggestion, God love him. Old Gus 'o the Green punishing poachers. Sad that it's more likely him than Chance though."

"Gus of the Green?" Charles inquires.

"He's our local Headless Horseman," Seraston explains. "By way of being neither an equestrian nor without a head. Kind of a Bogeyman figure, supposed to be a giant carved out of a tree, with two great hollows in his face that two purple-eyed white owls live in that see for him. He's supposed to protect the forest and slash up trespassers with his wooden claws."

Charles smiles. "And yet you found no splinters in the wound."

"No, sir," says Seraston, grinning. "I guess that puts old Gus in the clear."

 

 

*~*~*

 

 


	4. IV

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Epiphany, gentle readers, this year my gift to you is angst, horror and the longest chapter so far. The Disturbing Dream Sequence herein is my favourite part of the fic so far, and I hope you all enjoy it and its anvilicious SYMBOLISM.
> 
> In this chapter, Charles and Alex discuss the situation Charles has gotten them into, among other things, and call the mansion to let the others know what's happening, only to be met with some surprising news from the other end. A bad dream ends rather upsettingly, but another phone call forces Charles to put his feelings about it to the side for now. Warnings include the mention of everything that's gone before, what you might see as internalised ableism, and brief mention of upsetting medical procedures carried out on children.
> 
> The X-Men students mentioned in this chapter are characters I remembered from watching X-Men: Evolution as a kid, I don't know their comic backstories, only that I'm pretty sure none of them have been in the movies so far.

*~*~*

 

"You're angry," Charles finds himself saying, later that evening at the hotel.

Alex gives him a look like he'd thought Charles to be above making such obvious statements. Then he just shakes his head.

"I always thought it was wrong," he replies, and he's taking pains to keep his voice quiet so he doesn't start shouting. Charles doesn't have to ask or read his mind to know what he's talking about. "Always. But it was just stuff I heard about on the news, you know. Not that it wasn't... you know, going on where I lived but I never actually saw... or maybe I just didn't see..."

"It's different here though, isn't it?"

Fists clenched, Alex turns around like he wants to hit something. "It's insane. These people..." he trails off. "I just don't understand how it got like this. I just don't."

Charles glances out of the window towards the setting sun.

"I could give you a lecture," he says, "on how evolutionary theory relates to these behavioural patterns in human societies, or at least how it may do so. A lot of people don't like those kinds of theories, they see them as an attempt to excuse people of immoral actions—'I couldn't help it, it's how our species evolved' or what have you—and due to some very tenuous links with fascism and eugenics, well. Discussions can be quite heated. But even if I did explain those theories to you, Alex, you may find better comprehension of how these states of affairs come to pass, but you wouldn't truly understand it."

The bed creaks a little when Alex sits on it. "It's something you'd have to read minds for?" he asks, not entirely serious.

"And even then," Charles tells him, letting the thought remain unfinished. He starts on a new line instead. "So, what can you tell me about the activists' take on this incident?"

Alex pulls a notebook out of his pocket and holds it up. Charles smiles approvingly and motions for him to start.

"Uh... I talked with Lilah," he starts off, blushing a bit and Charles doesn't blame him. "You were right about the alibi, but pretty much everyone there who heard us talking agreed it would make things worse than they already are to bring it up. So..."

"Did they have any alternative theories?"

The wince on Alex's face is not promising an easy solution.

"They had... well, I wouldn't call them theories so much as 'suggestions'. Like, maybe the guy's fiancée did it 'cause she caught him cheating on her with someone else, only no one actually had any reason to think he'd been cheating on her."

... _if anything he seemed like some kind of fairytale prince when it came to her; a fairytale prince in a pointed white hood, what the fuck is that about?._..

He used to sing outside her window in the moonlight.

Charles knows that from a memory of Ellen Anne's he hadn't realised he'd taken with him. That bothers him more than the jarring contradiction in Walter's character, because being a telepath he's used to things like that. He can tell it's very disturbing for Alex though.

"That one guy, Locke—he thought it might be other Klan members thinking Lovell was going to tell on them to the authorities for some reason. They seemed to think he was connected to those murders in Neshoba county, he thought maybe they were eliminating witnesses but again, no evidence, not even really a reason to consider it."

"I was afraid that might be the case," Charles says. "Did you interview Mickey Dupris?"

Alex nods. "Even managed to get Deputy Kincaid to agree to talk to the woman who owns the farm they found the cow on; it was one of her cows. I asked why she hadn't made a report of the incident before, but apparently she's a bit..." he trails off, extends his index finger and waves it in a circle around his temple.

<<Mentally ill?>> Charles projects.

Another nod.

It's probably a coincidence, of course; but it is also possible that this woman had something to do with the killing. There's about as much reason to think so as there is for a stranger to think it was the fiancée, of course, but some of the paths his mind had been going down back at the funeral parlour had made him think about the killer not being of sound mind, and Kincaid had concurred.

He'd rather it not be. Never mind the fact that he can't be certain how this particular community would react to a woman with mental illness turning violent, there's the far more selfish worry that always comes with this sort of thing.

Mental illness... it sounds so wrong to say, but it can literally sicken him if he doesn't watch himself around it. That's a big part of the reason he never actually went into psychiatry, even though he was pretty sure that with his ability he could practically have performed miracles. 'Could have' being the operative terminology. Having the ability was one thing, the knowledge of how to use that ability safely and effectively for that purpose; well. He'd had a go at it the one time when he didn't know any better and the results had been a mixed bag. He's older and more experienced now, of course, but it's still too risky because, as he well knows, unsound minds can still affect him in ways he can't always predict.

And ever since Erik left and took Raven with him, it's been harder to reign himself in.

_Can you feel other people's legs, like they were your own?_

Edington hadn't known how hard it could be for Charles not to slip into those feelings.

"I suppose I should also ask if they identified anyone to you who they thought might be particularly troublesome?"

Alex rolls his eyes. "In Miri-Jay's words—that's the lady who's the local community leader now Chance is locked up—'it'd be quicker to list who _wasn't_ going to make trouble'. A lot of them were afraid there was going to be some kind of attack on the jail tonight."

Charles sighs. "That's not an impossibility. Though I will say in this particular case they might expect less danger from the police themselves than they would ordinarily; most of them are either well aware that Chance is innocent or they have doubts serious enough that they're actually willing to consider alternatives, and while few of them would shed any tears should something happen to Mr. Chance, none of them want the FBI in the county."

"Would they stand up against a lynch-mob though?" Alex asks him dubiously. "From what the others told me, these things stir up quickly."

"Do you think we should spend the night there as a precaution?" Charles asks him.

He feels an unexpected spike of pride from Alex; proud to have been asked his opinion about something so important as well as a little nervous, but Charles wouldn't be surprised if Alex was a better natural tactician than himself anyway, Charles' own life hasn't exactly been rife with physical combat.

So Alex considers the matter for a few moments and frowns. "It might have been an idea to, Professor, only... no offence, but you kind of look exhausted."

Now that comes as a surprise. Charles doesn't feel exhausted, or maybe he's become so used to the feeling that it no longer seems like anything out of the ordinary, but it's been a very long, hot and _loud_ day and with only those words from Alex the strength he'd thought he'd had begins to wane.

But he doesn't want it too.

"Alex, I'm perfectly all right."

"I know, Professor, it's just with the flight and the heat and all; and what happened outside the station--which it turns out I took a wrong turn to get to anyway, sorry."

"You have nothing to apologise for. I got the local physician, who is a very nice man named Seraston, to take a look at my wrist and there isn't even a sprain."

At first Alex nods to assure him that he's trying to accept what happened earlier that day, but then he freezes, face fallen, and his fists clench as he remembers.

... _asshole prick kicked him where he wouldn't know if something was wrong_...

Charles sees that split-second played out again from Alex's point of view, hears _'why didn't you stop that from happening, you're supposed to be looking out for him!'_ and, _'fucking son of a bitch, if I didn't have to hold back in public I swear I'd—stop, stop, you're better than this—but it's the Professor and that's different...'_

He feels a heavy feeling in his chest.

"Alex... I'm sure it's all right."

_... you have to, you have to, what would Bozo say if you didn't? But you can't just treat him like a child for God's sake he deserves better..._

The internal conflict is painful, and unnecessary if Charles would only swallow a little pride. He swallows.

"Why don't you take a look just to make sure?"

It doesn't erase the conflict from Alex, for even though he doesn't consciously consider that Charles is responding to specific thoughts of his, he does infer that the Professor is only saying it for his sake and not because he actually wants to be checked on.

All the same it allows him to make the choice, and though still reluctant, he slides off the bed and to his knees in front of Charles.

"I'll be quick," he promises.

It's not a promise he keeps, but that's not a surprise. The thing is that even though he knows this is uncomfortable for Charles; humiliating, as much as he's tried to get used to it, his instinct is to be gentle, and gentility doesn't lend itself to haste. He pulls the left leg of Charles' trousers up past the knee and tightens his grip on the fabric as soon as he sees the bruise left by Montaigne's boot.

Huge and ugly, mottled several different colours over the cap and down the shin it's nevertheless not the bruise that makes Charles copy the tightening Alex's fingers make, but the muscle wastage that leaves the pale limb looking...

He shouldn't say it. If it was anyone but himself he'd never say it.

Not that he's going to say it. He thinks it though, he still can't help it.

For a tenth of a moment he'd give anything to feel the pain he should feel when Alex traces his fingers along the bruise. Neither of them say anything while Alex checks against his own leg for comparison and Charles steadfastly does not read his mind because he doesn't want to hear 'pathetic' or any variation on it echoed back at him.

Eventually, Alex pulls the trouser-leg down again.

"Well, there's nothing serious that I can tell, but then again what do I know? I didn't even finish high school."

Charles leans forward and ruffles his student's hair. It's not true, after all. Alex may have dropped out but he had finished later, in prison. And even if he hadn't finished it's hardly the mark of a man's worth. Alex said what he said because he feels like he just can't do _anything_ , that's the only reason.

"Let's check in on the others, shall we?" Charles offers.

For the first time all day Alex gives him a smile that shows his teeth.

"Yeah, uh, I'm not sure Hank will be all that happy to be looking after the kids for more than a day."

Hank hadn't been happy with the news that he'd been looking after the kids when it was just the one day.

"He has Sean to help him," Charles says innocently.

"Nothing helps when it comes to Tabby," Alex says, faux serious. "Ray is all right, Sam... manageable, but Tabby is a menace to society."

"She's high-spirited," Charles insists.

There's a little snippet in Alex's mind that Charles can tell is actually meant for him to see; Tabitha jumping around outside, throwing her little bombs at the poor innocent shrubbery on the grounds, yelling, 'This bush goes BOOM! And this bush goes BOOM! And this one! BOOM!', while witnesses to the devastation had watched leaves and twigs flutter to the ground with open mouths.

Charles laughs, half from the memory, and half because he's pretty sure no one has ever actually tried to send him a non-verbal projection before. It's that thought that keeps him silently happy as Alex uses the room phone to connect to the mansion.

And speak of the devil...

" _Hello?_ "

Alex's shoulders slump a little.

"Hey, Tabby," he says, and Charles chuckles at his side. "Can you get Doctor McCoy on the phone?"

" _Alex! Is the Professor with you? Did you find another mutant? Is she a girl? Please can she be a girl, I don't want it to just be boys all the time, it's not fair_!"

Charles motions for Alex to hand him the receiver, and Alex does so shaking his head with resignation.

"Hello, Tabitha?"

" _Professor!_ " She practically shrieks his name, each syllable of his title dragged out ecstatically. " _Professor Xavier, did you find a girl mutant? Can we have another girl mutant, Pleeeeeeease_?"

His mind, ever a glutton for punishment, switches that vision of Tabitha blowing up part of his garden with Lottie and Angelina Edington running about their own back yard with the dog. Tabitha would have liked them, he thinks. They'd have been almost two years older now, if they'd lived, and that would have put Tabitha just a year older than Lottie, if considerably less mature.

Poor Tabby.

"I'm afraid it was a man again," Charles tells her. "And not a very nice man, I'm sad to say, so we won't be seeing him at the house."

" _Aww. Can you ask the diamond-lady to come live with us then_?"

That snaps him out of any residual gloom at once, and his back straightens. He feels a lightness in his chest that comes from his heart suddenly speeding up.

"Diamond-lady?" he repeats.

" _Mm-hmm. She came here this afternoon with a man in a cape, but Dr. McCoy didn't want them to stay—he was really mad, he yelled at them to get out, and he used curse words and everything._ "

_Ladybird, ladybird, fly away home; your house is on fire, your children alone._

"Tabitha, can you put Dr. McCoy on the phone now, please?"

Charles' body-language must have changed because Alex can sense something is wrong immediately, and his whole body tenses.

" _Sure thing, Professor X. Fuzzy-wuzzy! The Professor wants to speak with you!_ " Her voice quietens to a whisper as she explains, " _We call him Fuzzy-wuzzy now because of the poem Sean told us. Well, I do anyway, I think it suits him. Fuzzy-wuzzy!_ "

There's the sound of footsteps and unintelligible grumbling in the background; Hank's voice soon follows over the line.

" _Give me that—Professor_?"

"Hank? Hank, is everything all right?"

Tabitha had sounded fine. Bright and cheerful as she ever was. But what she'd said puts a sick feeling in Charles that chills his spine in the part he's not supposed to be able to feel anymore. He's not _there_ , after all. He can only hear her voice, and so he doesn't know that his students are all safe and—

The pause he'd had to consider that in is broken with an annoyed exhale. " _Yeah, we're fine_."

"Are you sure? Hank, Tabitha just said you had some visitors and I don't want to be the kind of paranoid old—"

" _Professor!_ " Hank interrupts. " _It's okay. Everything's okay_." He takes a deep breath. " _I mean, we're all fine, but... Erik showed up earlier this afternoon._ "

It's far less surprising than it should be; and that can only be because for two years now, and more so over the last few days, Erik has never really left his head. He's always just there enough to remind Charles that he had never been as close as he'd thought him.

" _Nothing happened_ ," Hank says hastily. " _He had his telepath with him and when she told him you weren't here they just left."_

"He wants to see me?"

Oh, the fulfilment of Charles' greatest wish and realisation of his worst nightmare all at once. He feels like he's about to go into cardiac arrest.

Why would... why would Erik want to see him now? Just why? And with Emma Frost by his side?

" _Frost was able to get from someone's mind that you were in Mississippi, but when she asked Erik if he wanted to wait for you he just said no, it didn't matter, and they shouldn't have come. So I have no idea what's going on with them_."

It had to be something that did matter or Erik wouldn't have even considered returning to the mansion. What if he was in trouble? What if Raven was in trouble? What if they needed Charles' help but were feeling too proud or (he hopes they do, it's petty but he hopes they do) too guilty to ask him for it?

He imagines that for just a moment. Erik dropping to his knees so they were closer to an equal height. Putting his hands over Charles' and resting his head against them, helmet forgotten on the ground. Telling him he was sorry. That he needed him.

_Of course I forgive you. Of course I'll help you. I'd do anything for you, you know that. Just don't hurt me again, please._

" _Professor_?"

"I..."

" _Are you at the airport yet_?"

Ah yes, the reason they called in the first place.

"The... sorry, Hank, that's why we called. We might be gone a few more days."

" _A few more—what? Is there something wrong_?"

"Nothing wrong," Charles reassures him hastily—too hastily, because he then has to say, "I mean, nothing with us at least, only it seems that I, in my boundless wisdom, may have gotten myself and Alex involved in an investigation into a local murder."

Hank is silent on the other end of the line.

"I shouldn't think it will take that long," Charles adds. "Just to clear the name of an innocent man. It's really nothing to worry about, we just got stopped and searched outside the station, and with me pretending to be a criminal psychiatrist anyway, and the locals being sadly out of their depth..."

He feels an unease like a twisting vine creep along Alex's mind, grown by Charles' misrepresentation of events to Hank.

_... that's kind of manipulative, he knows it's much more dangerous than what he's making it sound like..._

<<I know. I just don't want him to worry.>>

" _Professor_ ," Hank replies at length, " _not that I'd want anything to happen to an innocent man, but... are we talking about a civil rights type conflict? Because you hear things on the news about what's going on down there—_ "

"I know. And yes, there is an element of that, but I promise you we'll be fine, Hank. If worse comes to worst I can always use my powers and they'll never remember we were here."

" _I don't like this_."

That's no surprise. Charles still isn't so sure _he_ likes this.

"Well, if Erik is looking for me it's probably best I'm not at the mansion, isn't it?"

Alex shifts violently next to him, and that Cuban beach gets clearer and closer in Charles' head as the one he sees and the one Alex sees are overlaid and amplified. The sound is almost gone; the ringing in their ears too loud to hear the sea, the birds frightened away by the explosions; but they remember the smell of the smoke, the brightness of the sun, and the awful heat that permeated the entire area just as it does in this place.

Yet at the same time, a part of Charles thinks _no, go back to the mansion, what if it's something important and they need your help?_

He answers; _no. We accepted this responsibility already. We must see it through_ , because Erik made his decision two years ago.

" _Charles..._ "

It's almost a shock to hear his name out loud. Hank is the only one who ever uses it now, and even then it's rarely his first port of call.

"Don't worry, Hank. Apart from anything else there was something very interesting about the body of the unfortunate victim; a large portion of the abdomen almost completely drained of fluid, the pancreas in a very odd state. Neither myself nor the local doctor had ever seen anything like it."

... _Wow, is he always this manipulative? Probably is, but I guess we all have our flaws. Shit, he probably heard that_...

This time Charles makes no effort to respond to Alex' thoughts on his actions; he's entitled to them and frankly isn't wrong in his analysis of the situation, though Charles would like to know if Hank has any ideas about the strange case of Mr. Lovell's pancreas as much as he'd just like for him to be thinking about something else.

_What is Erik thinking about right now?_

_No. Stop it._

He gives Hank some more details about the case, asks him to have a think about it and makes sure the three younger students are all right. The preparations for the school are nowhere near complete, but the three students they've already taken in had literally had nowhere else to go, and there's plenty of room for them at the mansion, so that's where they are.

Once the contact details for the hotel and the station are in Hank's possession, Charles reassures him one last time and hangs up, returning to Alex, who by now is in a state of increasing agitation.

Alex makes the effort to sound calm when he asks—

"What was that about Erik?"

The rage that boils beneath those words threatens to make Alex's hands start glowing. Charles reaches out to touch his arm and sends a calming feeling towards him; not the kind that forcibly change the way Alex feels, Charles doesn't do things like that unless the situation is desperate, just a nudge like the physical touch, and all above board.

"He came to the house earlier this afternoon."

"Looking for you?"

Deep breaths. "Apparently."

"Why?"

Charles shakes his head. "I don't know. As soon as he heard I wasn't there he declared whatever venture he had planned 'a mistake' and took off." He sighs. "I can't imagine... perhaps he wanted my help with something. Or something happened to Raven because of one of his mad schemes..."

"Have you picked anything up?"

In the past two years there's been almost no direct contact from the Brotherhood. Erik and Raven came to visit him secretly once while he was in the hospital—while he was unconscious, for the most part—and four months ago a package containing photocopies of certain secret military documents had been left inside the mansion—likely by the teleporter on Erik's behalf.

They had detailed the treatment of an individual who had been admitted to a facility in Idaho near the Canadian border in 1958, following an investigation into the rumours of a vampire roaming a local small town. Such rumours hadn't been all that remarkable to the nearby military presence, but the fact that there were so many confirmed cases of sudden anaemia in the area piqued their interest, and when the locals finally apprehended the individual they believed responsible, the military had taken custody.

Once it had been realised that the person in question was indeed no ordinary human—they had developed a specialised appendage in their mouth that could pierce skin, latch on to a blood vessel, drain as much fluid as desired and then close the wound behind them, as well as perform some kind of mesmerism the researchers involved hadn't fully understood—their subsequent fate had been unpleasant.

It had been obvious why Erik had left the package there. He might as well have included a note that read _'I told you so'_ , as if this one incident damned a species anymore than Shaw's actions had damned theirs. But that's all they've heard from any of them since Cuba.

Charles has, however, been hearing _of_ them via a bit of subtle monitoring of certain officials in high places, often with Cerebro. He knows of eight separate incidents that Erik has perpetrated since their parting of ways, and that was only in the states—he has no doubt Erik is gathering information from other countries as well.

So far that's all he's seemed to be interested in; gathering information. While several world governments know by now of the existence of mutants, they are still unknown to every general population on the planet, and Erik thankfully has more sense than to announce it to the world and start a panic that could see many innocent people dead.

Not while his own position is so weak, at any rate. Hence the information gathering. Erik needs that, and he needs new members in his Brotherhood. Without Charles and Cerebro, that must be proving difficult, but then, he does have Emma Frost.

"I haven't heard anything of the Brotherhood since they left us their package," Charles admits. "Apart from the very slight possibility that they may have been in China in mid-August. As far as I know they haven't been on home soil since June, so I suspect a visit might have been due. I fear Erik may have found out something else he didn't like and come to rant about it to me."

Surely, he thought, if anything had happened to Raven, Erik wouldn't have just left without saying anything. _Surely_.

"Something worse than that thing in Idaho?" Alex asks him.

"Possibly. I cannot deny such things might be happening or have already happened. Probably the latter if that is the case; I don't think Erik would bother coming to us just to rant about it if someone was experimenting on mutants as we speak and he knew about it. And if he needed me to use Cerebro he wouldn't have left in a huff like that."

Alex's feelings become tumultuous, mixed; still angry and protective with a small streak of actual hatred towards Erik that isn't entirely entwined with the protective feelings he displays towards Charles. There's a kind of self-disgust in it, because he and Erik are both mutants and Erik deliberately uses his powers to cause harm; what Alex has always feared he himself would become.

At the same time, if there was a mutant being experimented on by the government right this moment, or any moment, Alex would want to do something about it. It's part of the reason he's glad Charles chose to stick his nose into this Lovell mess.

And for that reason, there's a lingering affection for Erik in Alex's mind that almost makes him hate the man all the more. This is something Charles understands all too intimately.

"I guess he can't just drop us a line every now and then to let us know what he's doing," Alex muses. "Just in case we have to prepare for an angry mob battering down the gates, terrified of dangerous mutants like 'Magneto'."

God, Charles hates that name. _What were you thinking, Raven? What was going on in your head that I didn't see?_

"Well, I keep barrels of boiling oil in the guest rooms for precisely that eventuality," he says, deflecting the idea with humour because it's the easiest way to address it and he's suddenly very tired.

What suddenly, though? He's always tired these days.

Alex smirks, however, so he counts it as a win. He asks Charles, "Boom-Boom not making too much trouble for the Beast, I hope?"

With that the heavier subjects appear to be dropped, and Charles can breathe easier.

"Tabitha is ever a breath of fresh air," he says diplomatically.

"More like a tornado."

"She's trying to fit in with the boys. One can understand her frustration with being the only lady in the house."

The smile slips off Alex's face and he frowns just a little. "I was kind of wondering about that," he says. "Why of all the mutants we've found there's so many more boys than girls. Is it just a coincidence, or..."

There's a spark that Charles seems to feel in his heart when he hears that curiosity, and he can't help the wide smile that splits his face. The troubles that affect him emotionally are sometimes too easily banished by problems of academia, and he likes to think it's because reason can triumph over emotion, even if it's still the underdog in the fight. Even his energy feels like it's been restored a little.

"Do you know," he says, his voice sounding a little more mischievous than someone of his position should strictly be using, "I actually have a theory about that. You know, to start off with, that the Y chromosome, which is what determines that you and I should be male, is actually a mutation in itself? So I thought to myself—and of course with less than fifty known subjects we can't actually be sure that there is significant gender disparity, but assuming that there is based on the evidence we do have I believe it may be limited to the first generation of mutants. Let me explain..."

Charles keeps babbling to an increasingly confused, yet amused Alex, as the last rays of that overbearing sun are swallowed by darkness.

 

*~*~*

_The wind whistles through the tall and empty hallways._

_It's September in Mississippi._

_It's October in Cuba._

_It's January in New York._

_—and he and Erik never had a Christmas together, why does that suddenly seem so strange?—_

_It's all three at the same time, but he's not in the hotel, on the beach, or even at the house. No, he's in that other place._

_—as far as your mother knows you have some normal illness. Appendicitis, or pneumonia or something, I doubt she'll look up from her bottle long enough to ask for more detail than that. But she'll think you're in a regular hospital and so will everyone else._

_So what if she doesn't know where you really are? Visit you? Come on, boy; I thought you were smarter than that—_

_There's somewhere he's supposed to be. He knows he's supposed to be somewhere, and he knows the way, and he sits in his wheelchair that isn't his wheelchair; it's much too big for him, the administration couldn't be bothered to obtain child-sized furniture for the children's wing and everything's too big._

_And he sits in the chair as it glides along the corridor, exactly the way that it's supposed to go, into exactly the right room._

_On one wall the children had painted flowers. On the opposite wall there's an underwater scene with grinning fish and dolphins._

_—and a starfish—_

_The wall on his left had been painted like an African plain, with a lion and a zebra smiling happily._

_—and the lion shall lie down with the lamb. Hail Mary, Mother of God..._

_...blessed be the fruit of thy womb—_

_He doesn't look at the right side of the room._

_Everyone is there now. Him, Raven, Lottie and Angie, Timothy, Lazlo, Melissa, Walter, Danica..._

_—Something's wrong though. Timothy isn't supposed to come here because he's never well-behaved enough. Timothy screams and rocks himself compulsively, clicking his fingers over and over until they bleed, and Charles remembers the night they lobotomised him._

_Doctor Hadlington was never comfortable with lobotomies, but Timothy wasn't his patient, he was Doctor Yaxley's, and Timothy was such a bother and must have been in such distress to scream like that all the time, and other doctors had had such promising results with the procedure, so he had to do something, didn't he?_

_The feeling closest to it that Charles can use for comparison is what he felt just after Erik transferred him into Moira's arms and he realised that the pain in his back... wasn't actually there at all. Thank god he'd only slipped partially into Timothy's mind that night..._

_But wait._

_Should any of the others be there either?—_

_Doctor Hadlington sits before them, strange and skeletal with sunken eyes and slicked back hair too white for his young age. The other children called him Doctor Skeleton; so did many of the adults._

_So did the grandmother who'd raised him on ice-water baths to try and wash away the sin of his illegitimate birth, which Charles isn't supposed to know and never says anything about, though he still never calls him 'Doctor Skeleton' because the voice says it hurts his feelings, and he's not supposed to listen to the voices, but he thinks that just in case it really does hurt the doctor's feelings, he still won't use it._

_Hadlington holds on his lap a massive tome, the gilt title on the cover reading 'FAIRYTALES', which Charles knows but somehow cannot read, and hopes he is not called upon to read tonight._

_"Are you all sitting comfortably, children?" Doctor Hadlington asks them._

_They nod._

_"Everyone? Raven?"_

_She nods._

_"Lottie? Angie? Lazlo?"_

_They all nod. They're all somehow children, even though Lazlo is the father of the other two._

_"Danica?"_

_She nods._

_Wait. Who is—_

_"Erik?"_

_Slowly, with untameable fear, Charles turns his head to the right and sees what he's tried not to for almost two years now._

_The wall that used to be painted with a happy polar bear and penguins has been knocked away and replaced with glass, through which they see another room, white walls lined with saws and scalpels, and other bits of shining metal._

_Erik is strapped down to a table in that room, fourteen again, his mouth wrenched open with a bridle-like device attached to a metal cage that surrounds his head. Shaw, once again the child Charles had seen briefly in his memories before the coin killed him, (them), sits on a stool at Erik's side, drill in hand._

_Tears run down Erik's face as he struggles, but Charles cannot move from the chair he's sitting in. He can only look while Erik makes desperate noises._

_Shaw leans closer, smiles, and turns to Doctor Hadlington._

_"Erik says 'yes'," he announces. "He is quite comfortable."_

_"Then let's begin," says Hadlington. "This time we will read 'The Fox and the Scorpion'."_

_Charles knows this story. He can't remember it like this (because this is a dream, something at the back of his mind whispers) but he knows he isn't going to like where it goes._

_"Once upon a time," Hadlington begins, "there was a clever young fox who lived in a forest by the sea."_

_Before Charles' eyes, the painted waves on the wall behind the doctor begin to move._

_"This fox was liked by everyone, but he had no real friends because he thought he was so much better than everyone else and wouldn't let anyone get close enough to become his friend."_

_A prancing fox with a swishing tail appears on the wall, flashing its blue, blue eyes at the children like the arrogant prat it is._

_"He dreamed of being a hero one day, going on quests and saving all sorts of people in distress, of whom there were so many, and so many more than a reasonable person would ever think they had the skill to save. But this fox was too clever for his own good, and he thought there was nothing he couldn't do easily."_

_Raven laughs. "He wasn't all that clever then, was he?" she says._

_"Perhaps not," Doctor Hadlington agrees. "Because one day, while he was walking along a path that was right next to the sea, he heard a cry coming from the waves."_

_As if to make a sound effect for the story, Erik whimpers loudly on the table. It's not an effect though. It's Shaw. Hadlington goes on as though he's heard nothing._

_" 'Help! Help!' he heard, and the fox looked out at the sea to see where the noise was coming from; just in time to see the head of a beautiful scorpion, disappearing beneath the waves. Now, the fox wanted to save the drowning scorpion, but he knew the creature was very dangerous, so when he saw the scorpion reappear, desperately trying to stay afloat, he said: 'Oh, Scorpion—I'd love to save you, but I'm afraid you'll hurt me with your lovely tail if I do. Can you prove to me there's more to you than rage and pain?'"_

_On the wall Charles sees the scorpion in the waves, a metal exoskeleton shining over its back and tail, waving its pincers back and forth in its anger. This isn't how the story goes._

_Hadlington continues, "and the scorpion said, 'Fox! You and I both live in the forest and are brothers, so I swear to you, Fox, I swear I'll never hurt you!'"_

_On the table, Erik begins to sob. This isn't how the story goes._

_"And that was all the fox needed to hear, for he stepped back and took a running leap into the ocean, where he swam as quickly as he could to the drowning scorpion to save him from his fate. As soon as he reached him he nudged his head between the scorpion's pincers and said 'hurry, Scorpion! Grab on to me and I shall pull us both to safety!'"_

_There's a pause._

_"Can you guess what happened next, children?"_

_He knows. He knows what happens next._

_Erik is screaming now._

_"The scorpion grabbed on to the fox's shoulders."_

_He sees it happen on the wall._

_"And then he brought his shining metal tail up..."_

_He sees it happen in his mind._

_"... and jammed the spike through the fox's spine."_

_He can't feel his legs._

_"The fox cried out in pain, and with his vertebrae no longer properly attached his lower half went limp and he couldn't swim. He cried out, 'Scorpion, what have you done?! Now we'll both drown!' And the scorpion cradled the fox close and said, 'I'm sorry, Charles. Peace was never an option.'"_

_Hadlington is looking directly into his eyes._

_This isn't how the story goes._

_"And then the fox and the scorpion both sank to the bottom of the sea and drowned. The end."_

_The other children cheer and clap, and when he looks down through eyes filled with tears Charles can see his own hands clapping too._

_"That isn't how the story goes," he whispers._

_Lazlo leans over and hisses to him, "you know it is, Charlie. Why don't you make them all quiet, then you won't have to hear it no more?"_

_And Raven cries out, "But what did they find at the bottom of the sea, Herr Doctor!?"_

_And Shaw sits up from Erik's bloodied form with a wide grin and answers:_

_"Dead starfish."_

 

*~*~*

 

Charles sits bolt upright in the bed and claps a hand over his mouth, unsure of whether he's done so to stop himself from being sick or to stop himself from screaming.

It takes him almost a moment too long to remember how to breathe, and when he does they're gasping breaths that seem to do nothing to calm the racing of his heart no matter how big they get. He can't balance himself enough to sit under those circumstances and collapses onto his side. In desperation, he reaches out half-blind for an anchor to remind him who and where and when he is, and on the couch no more than a metre away his mind finds Alex's still sleeping.

He grasps it, and nowhere near gently enough, as the younger man wakes up with a start and Charles is almost too late to reach further into his mind and pull him back from sending a red heat wave into the hotel wall in his shock.

A moment later he realises what he's done and feels sick.

Alex grabs at his head, turns around with an annoyed look on his face like Charles had played a childish prank on him, and stills as soon as he sees him.

"Professor?"

His expression fades into concern as he throws the extra sheets off and hurries to the bed.

"Professor..."

Charles knows what he's supposed to say in this situation. It's only a dream after all, and though his dreams aren't like other people's, they're still not real.

But part of him feels a scorpion's tail run through him. And part of him still hears the echo of Erik's screams.

_I can't help you. I'm sorry. I tried._

"Can't help who?" Alex asks him.

He must have projected that. Damn it.

"Professor, it's okay. Whatever it was, it's just a dream."

No, Alex is not supposed to be the one comforting _him_. He is the teacher. He is the elder. He is...

... _a clever fox, who thought he was so much better than everyone else_...

"Nothing," he manages to choke out. "It's nothing, I'm sorry; I woke you up, I... I touched your mind I shouldn't have..."

"Yeah, well, accidents happen," Alex assures him hastily. The fact that seeing Charles' eyes wet with tears is bothering him so much more than the abrupt invasion of his mind makes Charles want to sob, and Alex continues to reassure him. "Just so you know, you always have permission to grab onto my mind if I'm about to, you know. Fire off prematurely."

No more than a second after he's said it Alex suddenly considers another way what he just said could have been interpreted. There's a beat of silence.

And then they both burst out laughing.

Though his body does not appreciate the exertion of laughter, his mind calms itself as he allows it a small brush against Alex's, light enough so that his presence cannot affect anything, only let Alex know he's there as much as he knows Alex is. Alex puts a hand on his upper arm in turn and slows his laughter down to a smile.

"I shall keep that in mind," Charles tells him.

RIIIIIIIIIIIIING!

The phone. It startles Charles, and he's too exhausted to reach for it so he just lies there panting and lets Alex do it.

"Hello?"

Pathetically, Charles can't even muster up the strength of will to hear the other end of the conversation through Alex' head. He waits for Alex to reveal it the old fashioned way.

"What!?"

But maybe he shouldn't have.

"Okay, we'll be right there." Alex puts the phone down. "That was Deputy Kincaid," he tells Charles, reaching for his pants. "He's at the station and it looks like there's a mob forming on the other side of the street. They're afraid a riot is about to break out."

 

*~*~*

 


	5. V

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Updates might slow down from this point on; I'm writing another XMFC fic and I'm a lazy twat.
> 
> Things heat up in this chapter, and there's racial violence and mental distress, culminating in a shocking conclusion that will have viewers on the edge of their seats. Also, Hydra and Cyclops both make an appearance. [But not really. Tee hee.]

 

*~*~*

 

The night only feels cold because Charles has sweat so much in his sleep, and after wiping as much of it as he could off with a wet towel and changing into some of the clothes Alex had picked up for them on their way to the hotel he nonetheless still looks like a walking corpse.

Or so Alex tells him, just before he realises what he's said, and then only just refrains from hitting himself.

"A wheelchair-bound corpse just isn't quite as frightening," Charles muses, smiling. Alex's self-recrimination is far more painful than the nothing that is the fact that he forgot for a second that Charles wasn't walking.

They're in the car already, no more than halfway back to the station when Charles first begins to wonder if this entire venture wasn't a completely stupid idea.

_Of course it was_ , he imagines telling himself. _Now stop whingeing and get on with it._

The moon outside their window is yellow, and will be full in a few days, while wisps of clouds float past its light like curls of smoke around a candle. It's surprising how much light the body is giving off, given that it's only a reflection of the sun's.

The cries of night birds he can hear in the trees they pass give way to the angry shouting of men and women all too soon, accompanied by a tidal wave of emotion that might have knocked Charles over had he been standing. So often anger is compared to fire, to burning; but here and now and even with the real burning torches lighting up the street from the hands of the mob, here and now it is a storm, and a storm forming on two fronts.

Only one of which has guns.

Damn it.

Much of the same crowd that had been there in the afternoon is still there now; to his horror Charles picks out Violet immediately—there was no way she was leaving her father in that jail all night—and some of the other protesters aren't much older than her. Jonas Locke still has that knife, Miri-Jay is beginning to panic, and Greta remembers fires in the centre square of her small home town, and books from her mother's cousin's store being thrown on them when she looks at the torches the men on the other side of the street carry.

'Men' describes them accurately, they're here for violence, and for that reason they haven't allowed women into their crowd, though there would have been no shortage of volunteers in that respect. Funnily enough, not Lovell's fiancée, Ellen Ann. Lovell Sr. is there and there's some self-recrimination in his mind for the way he yelled at the girl at dinner following her timid suggestion that they be sure they unleashed their anger at the right person before justice was carried out. _She's only a girl, after all. She don't know what she's saying._

And funnily enough, Lovell is not the man at the head of the mob. That position belongs to his cousin, George Doherty, who also enjoys the position of Sixth Great Hydra of the state of Mississippi. He is flanked by his younger brother Daniel, Exalted Cyclops of this and two other neighbouring counties.

Charles frowns. Exalted _what?_

Did he just mix up some of their thoughts with other memories or is he still dreaming?

No; the Doherty brothers are definitely Sixth Great Hydra and local Exalted Cyclops. Those are apparently real ranks within the Klan. Well, nothing else about them makes any sense, so he supposes it fits; and much as it might seem like it, it's not a laughing matter. These positions give their holders considerable weight in the community when it comes to matters of interracial 'justice'. Daniel's thoughts are not those of a clever man, he can tell that right away, but George...

George is glaring out at the station, hands on hips, chest puffed out. It looks like he's glaring from the outside anyway, Charles can see his face through the eyes of protestors on the other side of the street, and it scares them. The man has a nose like a hawk, and silver eyes that glow like a hawk's in the torchlight.

They'd be a lot more scared if they realised these were the eyes that went with a manic grin that George is fighting hard to keep off his face. Charles can see it beneath the tight line his mouth is making now, clear as crystal. He shudders.

This man is not to be underestimated.

Alex bringing the car to a halt pulls Charles back from the world of thought and returns him to the world of sound, which is a jarring change because once the doors open the shouting seems so much louder than it possibly could have been. They've arrived just in time for another member of the Lovell-Doherty family to lead a train of six men carrying a rope to the front of the mob, said leader holding the end that's been tied into a noose, waving it.

There's whooping from the second crowd once they see it. George Doherty lets a smile slip through for a split second, while the men around him cheer and Jeremiah Lovell nods his head approvingly. The first crowd, in contrast, is quieter—because what can you say to that?

And at the doors to the station, Nero Kincaid grits his teeth and tries not to think about what's right in front of his eyes as Louis Montaigne laughs like the whole thing is a show. This one act drowns the sound back out with thoughts that practically scream at Charles.

_... just do nothing, it's not even real unless they reach the doors, and even if they do it's not real unless they touch you. None of it's a thing to do with you..._

_... know what Raines said, but if they do start storming the place it's not like we could be expected to fight them off and no great loss to the world if they did get in..._

_... don't panic, as long as they stay on that side of the road they can hold whatever they want up..._

_... I shouldn't be here. I should not be here..._

_... Jesus, did anyone call the FBI office in Jackson? I know they gave Elton the number but he hasn't left the line all day—did he get someone else to do it?..._

_... long as they make the first move anything we do is justified..._

_... this is for our brother, and all our people..._

_... can one knife do against a dozen men with shotguns, and you'd be giving them the excuse they want. On the other hand, nothing else has made a difference..._

_... kill all those filthy niggers..._

_... heck is Violet still doing here, Diana should have taken her home with the other kids..._

_... the law says, but in the mind of the public the accusation in itself is as good as the evidence. Hell, if the fiancée is on board we can get her to say Chance had made a pass at her, and then every white Christian in the country will be on our side, just got to push them over the edge and..._

_... they're going to kill him. They're going to kill him. The police won't stop them and they've got the rope right there, they're going to do it—going to kill Daddy!..._

"Professor!"

So many of the thoughts swirling through the crowd induce physical sensation, and Charles can't handle all the different feelings, his brain just interprets them as pain. They're so strong.

And through it all, he imagines Erik standing by his side—his hand outstretched.

_"One day, Charles, it will be us and people like us on that side of the line."_

Charles doesn't believe that. And it's not entirely out of optimism, because if it comes to that then their people may end up a vast minority in numbers, yes, but in power... Erik, Shaw and himself could have stopped small armies single-handedly. Who knows how many others like them there are; not to mention the fact that the other mutants are hardly anything to laugh at. No, if Charles gets his way it will be much better than this; if Erik does he fears it will be much worse.

But it won't be like this.

"Professor!"

... _God damn it, who called that snobby cripple up here?..._

There's Montaigne again. It's more than a little disturbing that his blunt and shallow mind somehow has the power to focus Charles', but right now Charles will take what he can get. He takes a deep breath and reaches for Alex to pull him into his chair; it's quicker if he just lets him do that, and though his pride takes a blow the physical contact is comforting.

"Just a minute, Alex," he says faintly. His fingers are digging into his scalp. "Just let me get my bearings."

Deep breath.

_... George? George, I think the guy in the wheelchair is with the FBI or something, what are we going to do?..._

And out.

"Right," Charles mutters to himself. It's difficult to think of a plan of action, and that tactical sort of thing has never been his strong suit.

_... Feds wouldn't have a cripple doing fieldwork, but he might be a consultant—wouldn't look good if anything happened to someone like that, might bring down a whole peck of trouble on the Klavern..._

And yet he can't do nothing.

"Once more unto the breach, dear Alex?"

The words sound more hesitant than he'd intended them to, but Alex smiles at him fondly.

"You want me to wheel you right up to the guy in front?" he asks.

"I think in this case there's some merit to be had in choosing the direct approach."

It will garner them a measure of respect from much of the crowd, if nothing else. If things get out of hand Charles can, of course, calm them down, but to do so in these circumstances--circumstances he's never faced before; well. He doesn't know what the consequences would entail.

So he's actually no little bit afraid as Alex pushes him out onto the road and between the shouting crowds. The activists have got their second wind since seeing the rope brought out and though they're about two thirds the size of the other group they're angry enough that they're able to shout past their fear.

Strangely, there's just as much fear in the larger group, whose faces turn towards him one by one. It doesn't matter that anyone looking in could see they have eminently less reason to be worried, those looking out just don't comprehend it.

It's then the undercurrent of hostility makes the first leap to physical violence. A man, Luke Worth— _make myself stand out here they might name me one of the Klavern Terrors come next Klonvocation_ —'Klonvocation'? _Really?_ Christ.

Anyway, Luke Worth hears the tail end of 'that guy's working for the feds' and the hand that's holding the heavy brick goes back and prepares to lob it right at Charles' head, because somehow in that moment the fact that the race-traitor is in a wheelchair will make it even funnier.

Instead of telepathically giving Luke the command to hold, Charles suggests to the man next to him; his uncle, Harlan Worth, that he turn his head slightly to the left. Harlan also occupies an exalted position in the local Klan; 'Klailiff' is how his nephew thinks of him, and he's one of the men carrying the rope. But he also knows well what Doherty's position on this matter is.

Without any interference from Charles he takes one hand off the rope and grasps Luke's arm with it like a vice.

"You keep that to yourself, boy," he hisses, " 'til the niggers make the first move."

Enough of the mob sees this exchange that Charles and Alex reach Doherty without having to dodge any missiles. Doherty's lips twitch when Alex stops the wheelchair in front of him, filled with the almost overbearing urge to smile. At the same time Jeremiah Lovell steps forward to protest, seeing Charles only as an embodiment of disrespect for his son's life, but Doherty raises his hand to keep him back.

He is the hero of his own tale, and Charles' presence gives him the villain he needs to match his wits with. No one on the other side of the road has pale enough skin to be deserving of that respect in his mind, save for two females and a boy still wet behind the ears.

Charles takes another deep breath.

"Mr. Doherty," he greets him. He lets him guess whatever he likes about how Charles knows his name.

Doherty tips his hat. "Evening, sir," he answers. "I don't believe we've met."

"Charles Xavier." He reaches forward to shake hands. "I'm consulting on the issue of Mr. Lovell's murder."

The handshake Doherty obliges him with and the greater intensity of feeling that comes with it is something he's hard-pressed not to cringe at. Doherty is different from the others in the group; self-assured and enjoying himself far too much to be concerned that a man has died, family or no. However, he's also not under the grip of strong emotion, and that makes him one of the few still able to listen to reason.

As long as Charles treads carefully, he decides, he should be all right.

"Oh, really?" Doherty asks him. "I was under the impression the culprit was sitting pretty in a jail cell inside that building in front of us."

Charles raises his eyebrows and leans back a little in his chair.

"Mr. Chance?" he responds. "Well, as someone who was known to have quarrelled with the victim before his death he was, quite reasonably, brought in for questioning; but at this stage calling him even just a suspect seems premature, never mind 'culprit'."

It's not what Charles would say if he had the choice of it. But he won't get anywhere if he doesn't treat the locals with respect, and right now saving lives is more important than proving points.

Meanwhile, Doherty's smile finally slips through.

"Is that so? Seems there's a few folks here who disagree."

"Yes, well, they may have been misinformed."

"Well, I don't know about that. There's an awful lot of anger in the air tonight, and they do say there's no smoke without fire."

Presumably unless one was blowing it up their own arse, but Charles doesn't say that either. He goes instead with—

"They also say it is better that ten guilty men go free than one innocent man be unjustly harmed, and with no physical evidence that Mr. Chance committed any crime I think it might be wise to conduct a more thorough investigation before anyone makes their mind up."

Several men close enough to hear what Charles is saying spike with anger. Doherty is not one of them, nor had Charles expected him to be. This is the beginning of his glorious battle, after all, so why would he be anything but thrilled?

"See, now," he says, "I don't know that I agree with that old saying. It seems to me—in my honest opinion—that a truly innocent man; a man innocent of pride, wrath or resentment, would gladly take what was meted out by a jury of his peers, knowing the good Lord would accept him onto His celestial shoal as long as he was pure of heart. And we have enough men to fill several juries right here." He gestures casually behind himself.

Charles finds it difficult not to roll his eyes. Concentrating on not doing that allows a small rush of arrogance past his self-control.

"If you're going to be pedantic, Mr. Doherty, then I feel obliged to mention that I create masses of smoke without fire every time I try to make toast."

Alex snorts behind him, and fortunately Doherty does too, still in the mindset of some messianic benevolent cowboy, hero of the common people meeting with the rich and affably evil foreigner who's come to exploit his people... somehow. It's ridiculous; utterly ridiculous, but it's as real to him as the chair Charles is sitting on is real to Charles.

And again, anger spikes around him, from men who don't appreciate Charles' attempt at humour. Their realities, at least, are based around themselves as simple men standing up against a government who might as well be foreign; for all they've seemed to care about this part of the country before some ungrateful negroes decided separate but equal wasn't good enough for them and made a ruckus about it, rather than as some grand saviours straight out of a movie.

He'll have to try a different tactic to calm their rage, and hopefully convince Doherty of the importance of holding back from any 'heroic' gestures for the time being.

"The fact of the matter," he continues, "is at the moment the ethical questions are only secondary to the issue of public safety. _Someone_ killed Walter Lovell, and rather horrifically too--if it wasn't Wilfred Chance then the killer is still at large and may kill again."

He wouldn't have believed it if he'd not been monitoring Doherty's mind, but Doherty had literally not thought of that. His silver eyes slide to the right, to a group of four men standing by cars on the other side of the road.

Charles hadn't noticed them before; is momentarily confused when he follows Doherty's gaze. Their emotions are nowhere near as consuming as those of the two crowds, and their fear is drowned out by... excitement?

Reporters. Ah, Charles sees what's going through Doherty's mind now. One can be a hero without anyone knowing, of course, but one cannot be worshipped as a hero without worshippers, and there can be no worshippers without men to spread the good word.

Of course, if the word turns bad because Doherty was lynching someone else while another innocent was being killed, the coveted worshippers will be unlikely to flock towards him.

Despite all this, he's still eager for that lynching to satisfy the crowd behind him. As far as he's concerned Chance deserves it anyway, after all—he registered, and black men have died for less than he's accomplished in these parts.

But it has to be something the reporters can spread the good word about afterwards.

Charles casts his mind backwards to the protestors behind him quickly to see how many of them are on the verge of... damn. There are at least five who are just about to crack and Jonas Locke is top of the list.

_... what does it even matter if I die? Maybe then they will finally see that our people are not just going to lie down and take it forever. They want to treat us like dogs? Fine by me so long as they understand that eventually the dog bites back..._

"Well," Charles interrupts that line of thought. Even though he's the only one other than Locke who can hear it, it takes that word to keep himself from getting drawn too far into Locke's mind, and his all too familiar mindset. "It's just something to think about, at any rate."

_...what does it even matter if I die?_

_It matters,_ he wants to say. _It matters._

"Heck, Mr. Xavier, we ain't savages," Doherty laughs. "We'll keep to our side of the road so long as no negro or negro-lover tries to provoke us. We got our right to peaceful assembly same as them, to protest the killing of one of our own."

"Of course you do," Charles tells him, and as he's a little afraid his lack of sincerity might show through he sends a little 'that was sincere' prompt to the closest members of the crowd. "I just hope you know that the local law enforcement is doing everything they can to bring the killer to justice. Everything they can do when they don't have to worry about other matters."

Hint, hint.

"Too true, friend. But I do find myself moved to point out that their mob was here first."

"Well, that's another matter," Charles sighs. "If you'll excuse me. It was lovely meeting you."

Everyone has to know that wasn't sincere.

"And you!" Doherty replies.

<<I think we're safe on this front for the immediate future,>> Charles projects towards Alex. <<I'd like to talk to Miss Hatley and Mr. Locke though.>>

Alex doesn't nod; it would look as though he were nodding at nothing, but he pulls the chair back so he can turn it to the station and moves him forward, relishing the chance to take himself and Charles out of the vicinity of Doherty and his pack. To him that conversation had felt like it had taken hours, hours of trying to keep his emotions under control so the Professor didn't have to wipe anyone's mind of sudden red laser beams, while at the same time keeping an eye out for anyone who looked like they were about to snap and attack them.

Charles has to admit, he doesn't exactly feel much safer being pushed back towards the activists. Most had seen the handshake he'd given Doherty, and he hadn't missed the alarm and hostility that move had engendered from this crowd. Even without that, Charles is white, foreign, and as far as they know acting on behalf of the federal government, none of which makes him immediately trustworthy.

Even though they should know by now that he—

No. There's no reason for them to know anything about him by now. He's never spoken to them; he just knows them through the thoughts they don't know he can read. He's nothing to them—an enigma.

He doesn't dwell on that mental misstep. In these circumstances, he can't afford to.

Instead, he picks out Miri-Jay Hatley at the front of the crowd, the only one of the few remaining women that the men haven't pushed to the back in anticipation that they'll need the protection. She's of dark bronze complexion, a short, straight weave over her hair and eyes that make her look a little older than she is. Locke stands next to her, somewhat lighter-skinned and shorter than Charles had thought him previously; about his own height, or what it had been when he'd still been able to use it.

Miri-Jay hasn't said anything since the men across the street started waving a noose. She doesn't know what she can say. She's only twenty-five.

"Miss Hatley?" Charles inquires, hand outstretched.

She hesitates before she takes it. Charles can't blame her.

"Mr... Xavier?"

"That I am. Listen to me closely, Miss Hatley, this is very important. Doherty wants to try and provoke you into making the first move. It is _imperative_ to him that it is someone on this side who does, so that the incident he hopes to perpetrate can be framed as self-defence, but he will _not_ attack as long as your people stay on this side of the road."

"What about the rest of them?" asks Mickey Dupris. Charles is a little surprised he's still there.

"Doherty seems to have enough control over them for now. The one other thing that is staying his hand is the possibility that there is indeed a violent maniac still at large, and he will in part be held responsible if anything happens while he's here. In order to make sure the rest of them stay in line, I'm going to need to give them something concrete to focus their attention on."

Miri frowns. "You mean an actual suspect? Like I told your boy this afternoon, we don't know any actual suspect!"

"I don't think this person has any kind of grudge against Lovell," Charles says hastily. "The killing was... messy, frantic, possibly not even intentional. I thought if Lovell startled someone while he was out in the woods perhaps..."

"Some deranged lunatic, you mean?" Elton Danvers asks him, wiping sweat off his glasses.

Dupris shakes his head. "There ain't anyone like that out here."

" 'cept old Gracie, of course," Miri adds with a humourless snort.

Charles sees a grinning, pale woman with sunken eyes and ragged clothes giggling in her mind. The same woman is now in Dupris' thoughts, staring with confusion at a cow that's been half torn away. She must be the woman Alex had mentioned earlier. Dupris doesn't let Miri's estimation of her character stand though.

"Come on, Miri, Magdalena's harmless." He averts his eyes. "Shouldn't say things like that about her."

There's distaste for Magdalena Grace bubbling up in Miri's mind, but not a distaste that's tinged with fear in any way, so Charles doesn't pry further for now.

"They may be a drifter," he postulates. "Or someone who was recently released from an institution." He hates to throw suspicion on a group of mostly non-violent, vulnerable people, but with the evidence he has, he almost has no choice "Do you know if there are any in the area?"

"Nearest would be Whitfield," someone mutters. " 's not far from Jackson."

"Well, it ain't Magdalena," says Dupris firmly. "Whoever it was killed her cow too, and if that had been her she hardly would have shown me the evidence now, would she?"

There's an opening there Charles hadn't realised he'd been looking for.

"You're Mr. Dupris?" he asks.

_... how the Hell did he know that? That Summers feller must have told him, damn that's a good memory..._

"Uh, yes, sir."

"And you and this Miss Grace both saw a cow whose wounds bore resemblance to Mr. Lovell's?"

"I heard Doctor Seraston talking about the hole when I was delivering to the parlour. What'd he call it—'elliptical'? That means an oval, right?"

Charles nods.

"And the area around it was all hard too."

"Did anyone else see this?"

Somehow Charles doubts Doherty and his ilk will be all too happy to disperse themselves on the words of a black man and a mentally disturbed woman.

"No, sir. We buried that cow out in the forest. Doubt there's anything left of it by now."

Damn.

"But," Dupris continues. "It was fresh killed when she showed it to me, and Wilfred was at a rally in Lafayette for that whole weekend; even Montaigne must have known that."

A small blip of recognition from the back of the crowd when the name is mentioned is all the warning Charles receives before—

"Y'all talking about me down there?" Montaigne yells. Christ, he must have good hearing.

Charles raises his voice. "Just discussing whether you might be able to give Mr. Chance an alibi!"

Montaigne's face screws up just as it might have done if Charles had just told him he was being honoured in the nation's capital that night for his services to the black community.

"Alibi?" he repeats. "Heck, I don't know what Chance was doing when he killed Walt!"

That sentence prompts Charles to make what is probably a similar expression.

"No," he calls back at length. "It seems no one does. But as I understand we have another victim of the same killer, and one whose death you _can_ alibi Mr. Chance for. Back in July—"

CRASH!

Miri screams and Charles tries to swivel around as far as he can to see what just happened, even as he knows precisely what has just happened. Someone—Bill Canton, aged seventeen—had just tried to throw a Molotov; thankfully someone too incompetent to succeed in all respects; the fire he'd lit the tissue with had gone out just as he'd thrown it into the air, and the bottle had fallen short of the front line of protestors, but the deed has been done all the same.

"Damn it, boy!" yells Doherty, "I told you to wait 'til they break the line!"

"That's it," hisses a man on their own side of the road. "I've had just about enough—"

He elbows his way forward just before Dupris catches his elbow and holds him back. "Don't do it, Micah, it's not worth it!"

"Not worth defending ourselves? He said they wouldn't attack as long as we kept to this side of the street, but we all know they'll take the first opportunity—"

Charles tunes him out because he's more focussed on speaking to Dupris than acting for the moment, instead trying to psychically sweep the area for whoever's going to make the most trouble. The first mind he lands on—

Oh dear. The first mind he finds is followed by half a dozen more in quick succession, and he can't talk all of them down at the same time, nor rely on others doing it for them; not when another three are approaching breaking point and Doherty—only a few seconds ago so confident—now feels the stirrings of panic and sees himself losing control of the situation.

Kincaid sees it too, takes a step forward despite a disapproving glare from Montaigne.

"It was just Canton!" he says desperately. "Just Canton, everyone knows the boy's a troublemaker—how many fires did he start over this summer alone? on white _and_ coloured properties!"

Before anyone can reply, Jeremiah Lovell cries out, "The Lord take His vengeance upon all of thee!" in a voice so filled with hatred, with eyes so ice-cold and thoughts that feel so like the lightning bolts of intensity in the previously murky storm of rage that for a second Charles can't breathe.

He strides forward, raising a pistol that thankfully Doherty sees in time.

"Jerry, no!"

"God damn it!" Daniel Doherty spits, as he and several of the men nearby all rush Lovell at once, Daniel grabbing his wrist and jamming it down towards the road, while Lovell bellows, 'get off me' and struggles like a man possessed.

Then Charles senses Locke's hand reaching for the knife in his pocket just in time to freeze him, moving the hand away so no one on the other side sees him reach for a weapon and pushing his conscious mind back until this crisis is averted.

"Aw, shit," hisses Montaigne, looking nervously to Kincaid, who surveys the crowd fearfully.

"Lou, we may need to pull everyone back into the building!"

"What, these assholes!?" Montaigne cries. "Hell if I do that, Nero—they've made their bed!"

"At least let the women into the building, for God's sake!" yells the man called Micah.

A hand on Charles' shoulder distracts him just enough from the violent emotions that are overtaking his mind—God, he's never felt anything like it before, never...

"Professor?"

Alex is scared too. Not just for the physical safety of himself and the protestors; but because he's known Charles and experienced his powers long enough now that he can guess what's happening, and he's worried what this will mean for Charles' mind.

Charles wants to laugh, and cry, and scream, and roar with rage, and the impulses to do all these things clash and scrape against each other hard enough that he can't do anything at all. He knows, somewhere, that he could stop this if he wanted to, freeze them all, but he can't— _kill all the filthy niggers—hah! This'll start a real riot—shoot them! Shoot them!—fuck... what're they thinking—No! No! No! No! No!—Professor, listen to me, you have to snap out of this—_

So loud. So loud. So loud.

_I'm going to count to three..._

You did this.

Make them all quiet.

( _Like you did before—HATEYOUHATEYOUHATEYOUHATEYOUHATEYOUHATEYOUCHARLES! Oh God, the fire! The fire!)_

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

...

Sirens. Sirens in his head.

Sirens in everyone's head?

"Professor."

_...skin to skin contact is stronger; put my hand over his—come on, Professor, please!..._

Warm weight of another hand on his. Deep breaths.

_... yes, that's it, Professor. You can hear the sirens. Hopefully that's the cavalry—wait, who's that in the back of the car?..._

Charles blinks. With tremendous effort he pushes away the thoughts of those around them, helped by their own various lapses in concentration that have been engendered by the wail of police sirens mounted on one of the department vehicles—one that's coming up the road now.

McIntosh, he realises. He'd been wondering where that young man had got to.

Then his heart takes a sudden jolt. McIntosh is even more scared than anyone else here.

He almost doesn't want to know why, and pulls himself away from Locke's mind with fervent hope that nothing leaked through of his minor episode just then. He doesn't think anything has, but he can't know for sure until his mind clears up.

McIntosh pulls the car up hastily, the tires screeching just a touch. He's right in front of their line, between them and the mob, which is helpful but in this case unintentional; he just wanted to get as close to the station doors as possible so he could run inside and hide.

... _get a hold of yourself, Karl_... he's telling himself. _You'll be safe enough here_.

Nonetheless he's shaking when he steps out of the car, almost forgetting to turn the siren off. There are two black children in the back seat, children Dupris recognises before McIntosh can figure out what to do.

"Anton?" he calls out. "Jackson?"

"What the hell, Karl?" Montaigne shouts, though anyone can see he's relieved for the intervention. "What'd you bring those brats here for, day-care?"

It's then McIntosh looks helplessly towards Charles, and Charles knows what's happened.

"Oh, no," he whispers.

"What?" Alex asks him. "What's happened?"

Deep breaths.

"There's been another killing."

Everyone who heard him say it spins towards him in shock. The back doors of the car open and the older boy drags his younger brother out by the arm. There's dirt and blood all down the back of his old shirt.

"Anton, where's your Mama?!" Dupris stutters.

"What's going on, Karl?"

Kincaid's already guessed it, but he had to ask.

"...nother—another killing," he mumbles.

"What!?" yells Montaigne. He's hoping he heard that wrong, only he didn't.

McIntosh finally looks him in the eye.

"There was another killing," he says. He's rocking back and forth slightly, terrified. The older boy—nine at most—comes forward and throws his arms around Dupris with a wail. The younger—about five—doesn't understand what's going on. "That lady—coloured lady what lives north of the Carton farm, Diana Arkette—she's been killed."

Charles finds himself slowly closing his eyes, as piercing horror comes at him from all angles. _Focus,_ he tells himself. _You don't have to feel this. Focus._

Montaigne looks out at the mob for a second, as if suddenly realising that they shouldn't really be there, then at Kincaid, who should know better than him what to do in this kind of situation, then at McIntosh again, shaking his head back and forth in minute movements without even realising he's doing it.

"Well..." _Fuck me. What the Hell is going on here?_ "Well, did it look like the same guy?"

_...flesh torn, blood everywhere, long slashes going down to the bone—why did she have to be wearing a white dress, God damn it, you could see all the blood—grouped in threes just like Walt..._

"It was him," McIntosh chokes out. "It was... it was done just the same. Worse."

"Do you think Wilfred Chance killed her from his jail cell!?" roars Locke, suddenly back in the thick of things.

Montaigne sneers at him.

"Shut up, nigger. No one asked you."

"Maybe you should have asked us!" Miri cries at him. "Maybe you should have done a God damn single minute of actual police work before you made Wilfred your scapegoat!"

"Ah, if we hadn't locked him up he'd be dead by now!" Montaigne shouts back, but he's noticeably shaken. "And there's no telling that it would have made a difference! Expert over there says it was probably a drifter; not someone anyone here knows!"

Charles holds one hand up. Trying to speak makes him feel like he's in a vat of treacle, but he tries all the same. "Please. I can't imagine how difficult this is for you, but right now protecting this community—"

"I saw who did it!"

There's dead silence in the air.

The silence has been caused by the younger of the two boys McIntosh brought back from the scene of their mother's murder. Jackson Arkette. His youth poses a problem for Charles' telepathy; the way young children perceive their realities is very different to how an adult or even an older child would, and the younger they are the more probing their minds feels like he's trying to read in a language he's long forgotten, so for now he doesn't probe his mind and lets the boy speak instead.

"I saw who put Mama in the shed," he announces.

Various glances are exchanged among the crowd. The hopeful, dreadful quiet is broken by Doherty, who Charles hadn't even realised had got so close to the car, accompanied by several of his men.

"Who was it, boy?" he asks. "Who hurt your Mama?"

Jackson, devoid of any sense of apprehension, jogs over to Doherty and takes his hand. Charles is surprised Doherty lets him, but guesses the man sees it as the 'heroic' thing to do. Jackson pulls him along three steps and points at the tall, old oak tree on the station lawn.

"It was Gus o' the Green," he says. "He did it. I saw him."

The humid night is suddenly very cold.

 

*~*~*

 


End file.
